Online scams and fraud in Canada quietly cost billions, because most people never say a word. You lose money to a deepfake video of a politician promising returns. You feel ridiculous. So you tell nobody. Not your family. Not the police. That silence is not a side effect of the scam. It is part of how the scam works.

There is a version of this happening right now in your city where someone lost tens of thousands of dollars and the only person who knows is a fraud specialist they found online. The shame runs that deep. It is why the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre’s reported losses of $704 million last year are almost certainly a fraction of what actually happened.

Stop, check, talk. Three words that sound simple until you are the one who needs them. Knowing the framework before the urgent email arrives is the only version of this where you are not making decisions under pressure someone else engineered.

Topics: online scams Canada, investment fraud, phishing emails, deepfake scams, fraud prevention

GUEST: Julie Matthews | http://standagainstscams.ca

Originally aired on 2026-03-11