Canada's recovery-pitch reports: from C$1.7m to C$21.9m in four years
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre publishes its full reporting database, and it files second-wave recovery approaches under their own category. That category shows one of the sharpest increases in the whole dataset: from 117 reports and C$1.7 million in 2021 to 713 reports and C$21.9 million in the first nine months of 2025 alone. Recovery fraud is not a footnote to other scams; it has become a substantial category of its own.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- Canada
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Reported loss
- $15.7 million
- Victims
- 440
- Schemes
- Recovery scams
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- 2021: 117 reports, 64 victims, C$1,680,409 reported lost.
- 2022: 225 reports, 145 victims, C$2,514,107.
- 2023: 434 reports, 248 victims, C$7,343,936.
- 2024: 571 reports, 333 victims, C$9,245,689.
- 2025 to 30 September: 713 reports, 440 victims, C$21,940,838 — already more than double the whole of 2024.
- Reported losses in this category rose roughly thirteen-fold between 2021 and the first nine months of 2025.
- The CAFC estimates that only a small fraction of fraud in Canada is ever reported to it, so these are floors.
Why this case matters
Most of what is known about recovery fraud comes from warnings rather than measurement, because few agencies break it out as a category. Canada does. Every figure above is aggregated from the CAFC’s own record-level dataset, which anyone can download and check — including from our cleaned copy.
The shape is what matters. Reports roughly six-fold over four years; victims roughly seven-fold; dollars roughly thirteen-fold. Losses are growing much faster than reports, which means the average recovery victim is losing substantially more than they used to.
Reading it honestly
Three caveats, because this is the kind of chart that gets quoted without them.
The 2025 figure covers 1 January to 30 September only — it is nine months, not twelve, which makes the comparison with earlier full years understate the increase rather than exaggerate it.
These are reported losses. The CAFC says plainly that only a small fraction of fraud in Canada reaches it, and recovery fraud has a particular reason to be under-reported: the victim has already reported once, was not made whole, and has now been taken a second time. That is not a set of circumstances that encourages a third phone call.
And a rise in reports is not automatically a rise in crime. Awareness campaigns move these numbers. But awareness does not usually multiply the dollar figure thirteen-fold while report counts multiply six-fold; that divergence points at real growth in the size of individual losses.
What it tells you about the scheme
Recovery fraud tracks the fraud that comes before it. Canada’s investment-fraud losses grew steeply across the same period, and each of those victims is a name on a list. When you see a category grow like this, the thing growing is not really the creativity of the pitch — it is the size of the addressable market that earlier scams have created.
Sources
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre Fraud Reporting System Dataset. Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre / RCMP. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: All report counts, victim counts and dollar figures above, aggregated from the record-level open-government extract.
- Report fraud and cybercrime. Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The CAFC's role and its statement that most fraud goes unreported.