Investor Protection Guide
How to Protect Yourself From Investment Scams in Canada
Reviewed by: William Galipeau · Last updated: 2026-08-24
Investment fraud cost Canadians over $500 million in 2025. The good news: most investment scams follow predictable patterns. Understanding these patterns dramatically reduces your risk.
Step 1: Verify registration before sending any money
Every firm that trades or advises on securities in Canada must be registered with a provincial securities regulator. Check at aretheyregistered.ca before sending a single dollar. This single step would prevent the majority of investment frauds targeting Canadians.
Step 2: Recognize the universal red flags
- Guaranteed returns, no legitimate investment can guarantee returns
- Urgency and limited time, "this offer closes Friday" is a pressure tactic
- Messaging-app-only contact, legitimate brokers have regulated business channels
- Cryptocurrency payment required, legitimate Canadian brokers accept regulated payment methods
- Dashboard gains that cannot be independently verified
- Withdrawal fees, no legitimate institution requires an upfront fee to release your own money
Step 3: Be skeptical of referrals
Your friend may genuinely believe they made money, they saw gains on a dashboard and may have made an early withdrawal. Always conduct independent verification regardless of who introduced you.
Step 4: Search before you invest
Search the company name plus "scam," "warning," and "Canada." Check our Fraud Alerts database. Check the BCSC Investment Caution List. Check the CSA investor alerts at securities-administrators.ca.
Step 5: If something goes wrong, act immediately
The first 48 hours are the most important for recovery options. Contact your bank's fraud line immediately.
The two checks that catch most investment fraud
Almost every case in this registry would have been prevented by one of two checks, each of which takes under a minute.
Check registration. Anyone selling securities or derivatives to Canadians must be registered in the province where the client lives. Search aretheyregistered.ca, the free national database. If a firm is not there, it cannot lawfully take your money — regardless of any licence number, certificate or regulator logo shown on its website. Those are copied from real firms routinely.
Check the warning lists. Search the company name and the domain separately, because operations rebrand constantly while keeping the same infrastructure. This registry, the Canadian Securities Administrators, and each provincial regulator all publish investor alerts.
Warning signs that repeat across every case here
- You were approached, rather than seeking out the investment yourself
- Returns are described as guaranteed, fixed, or risk-free
- There is urgency — a closing window, a limited allocation, a price about to move
- Payment is by cryptocurrency only, or to a personal account rather than a corporate one
- An account manager stays in close, friendly contact and discourages you from discussing it with family
- You are asked to install remote access software such as AnyDesk or TeamViewer
- A small first withdrawal succeeds easily, then larger ones do not
- A fee is required before a withdrawal can be released
That last one is the reliable tell. On a legitimate platform, charges come out of the balance. Being asked to send money in to get money out means the balance is not real.
Protecting a family member
A significant share of the losses documented here involve people whose families noticed something was wrong before they did. Two things help more than warnings.
Ask what the platform is called, and look it up together. Nobody has to be right or wrong about the investment; the register is a matter of public record.
And make it easy to talk about. These operations work by building a relationship and then isolating the person inside it — the embarrassment of admitting the relationship was fake is often what keeps someone paying for months after they first had doubts.
If it has already happened, the reporting process is here, and it is worth knowing that anyone offering to recover the money for an upfront fee is running the second scam.