A new analysis from Statistics Canada shows fraud is on the rise in Canada but few Canadians who fall victim to the crime are reporting it to police.
By 2019, one in six Canadians over age 15 (17 per cent) reported to the General Social Survey (GSS) that they had been a victim of fraud in the previous five years, with a median reported loss of $600 per individual and total loss of $16 billion.
The survey captured Canadians’ experience with crime regardless of them reporting to police. It found fraud victims were most prevalent in Alberta (22 per cent) and B.C. (18 per cent).
Yet, “few people who reported being victims of fraud in the five years preceding the GSS reported it to the police,” stated the analysis called “Self-reported fraud in Canada, 2019.”
Roughly one in 10 Canadians who reported they were victims of fraud also reported the fraud to police, whereas 52 per cent reported theft from their car and 45 per cent reported a break and enter of their home. The rate of reporting fraud to police is closer to that of sexual assault (six per cent), the analysis noted. The survey found most victims (65 per cent) did, however, report fraud to their bank, when applicable.
Of the five million who had reported being a victim of fraud, about half of them (7.8 per cent total) had reported a fraud against them had occurred in the past year. This results in fraud being the most prevalent crime committed against Canadians, based on the survey. The second most prevalent crime was theft of personal property, with 6.8 per cent of Canadians reporting they were victims; and 4.8 per cent of Canadians reported being the victim of a violent crime, such as assault, sexual assault and robbery, the analysis showed.
As of 2019, fraud represented 12 per cent of the Crime Severity Index, which is used to measure crime across Canadian communities. Ten years earlier, in 2009, fraud represented just 6.5 per cent of the index, according to Statistics Canada.
And while fraud is up significantly in Canada, total court decisions for fraud cases have trended downward since 2009. Since then there have been 12,500 court decisions, on average, with under 12,000 such decisions in 2018 and 2019.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre is where Canadians can report fraud, although just seven per cent of victims do so, according to the survey. The centre notes fraud can come in many forms and it has a list of scams by business type, methodology and population target. Recent warnings include cryptocurrency investment scams and the grandparent phone scam where a person identifies themselves as a family member to an elderly person.
Limited to what is reported to it, in 2020, the centre "observed approximately $165 million in reported victim losses" whereas in 2021, reported losses increased to $379 million.
Nine in 10 reported frauds involve obtaining personal information; however, victims often do not know how their information was obtained, according to the survey.
“Among fraud victims who know how their personal information had been obtained, many (39%) said that their credit or debit card had been cloned or copied, that access to one of their accounts (online, email) had been pirated (18%), that they themselves had provided the information (16%) or that the information had been obtained after a database breach or a data leak (10%),” the survey stated.
In dollar terms, nearly four in 10 frauds are caught in time to prevent any losses whereas one in 100 result in a loss greater than $100,000. The average reported loss, when it occurs, is $5,120, according to the report, which is published online.
