Canada: Reporting to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), based in North Bay, Ontario, is the national hub for fraud reporting in Canada — and understanding what it actually does helps set the right expectations for what happens after you report.

How to report

• Online: antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca
• Phone: 1-888-495-8501 (Monday–Friday, 9 AM–4:45 PM ET)

Have ready: the phone number, email, or website involved; screenshots of messages; dates, times, and amounts if money was lost; and any names or usernames the scammer used.

What the report actually does

It's worth being direct about this: an individual CAFC report rarely triggers its own dedicated investigation. What it does do is feed into a national database that investigators use to identify patterns, track active fraud operations, and build cases — the CAFC has been part of shutting down large call-centre fraud rings, romance scam networks, and impersonation schemes because enough individual reports built a large enough picture. Canadians lost roughly $643 million to fraud in 2024 according to CAFC data, and the agency has stated that only a small fraction of incidents are ever reported — so every report genuinely adds to that picture.

Alongside the CAFC report

• Contact your bank immediately if money was transferred, and ask about recall options for the specific payment method used.
• Report to local police if you suffered a financial loss — most Canadian police services accept online fraud reports directly, separate from the CAFC.
• Report identity theft to credit bureaus — Equifax and TransUnion both let you place a fraud alert or credit freeze on your file if personal information was compromised.

Watch for CAFC impersonation

Because the CAFC is well known, scammers sometimes impersonate the agency itself — contacting previous scam victims and claiming to be helping "recover" lost funds, using fake CAFC letterhead and logos. The CAFC has explicitly warned that it will never ask victims to transfer funds or make any payment. Recovery-pitch and investigator-impersonation scams cost Canadians tens of millions of dollars a year, specifically targeting people who've already been scammed once.

What to do next

If personal information beyond the fraud itself was compromised, Canada's privacy law also gives you specific rights — see Canada's PIPEDA Explained. Once you've reported, follow the payment-method-specific recovery steps in the complete international recovery guide, and consider what personal information may already be exposed and used to target you — a Scan My Shadow report checks your phone number and email against 1,500+ sources.

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