Ten times fewer reports, ten times the loss each
Canadian vendor fraud reports fell from 4,120 in 2021 to 426 in the first nine months of 2025 — a fall of about 90% — while loss per victim rose from roughly C$3,200 to roughly C$8,500, and spiked to C$15,500 in 2024. Australia's false billing category shows the same divergence. Invoice fraud is reaching far fewer businesses and taking far more from each.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- Canada, Australia
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Reported loss
- $1.8 million
- Victims
- 298
- Schemes
- Invoice and vendor fraud, Business email compromise
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- Canada 2021: 4,120 vendor fraud reports, 2,494 victims, C$7,963,549 — about C$3,200 per victim.
- Canada 2022: 3,275 reports, 1,989 victims, C$3,528,198.
- Canada 2023: 1,466 reports, 954 victims, C$4,011,545.
- Canada 2024: 814 reports, 542 victims, C$8,400,491 — about C$15,500 per victim.
- Canada 2025 to 30 September: 426 reports, 298 victims, C$2,519,867.
- Canadian false billing: 395 reports and C$63,572 in 2021, rising to 557 reports and C$709,761 in 2022, then declining in volume while losses stayed an order of magnitude above 2021.
- Australia recorded false billing among the top five scam categories by loss reported by people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities in 2025: 201 reports with loss, A$2.1 million, up 59.6%.
Why this case matters
A 90% fall in reports over four years is a striking number, and on its own it would read as a category being defeated. The loss figures say something different.
Loss per victim went from about C$3,200 in 2021 to about C$15,500 in 2024, before settling around C$8,500 in the partial 2025 year. Fewer businesses are being caught; the ones that are, lose several times more.
What is probably behind it
Two things, and they pull the two measures apart.
The cheap version has been squeezed out. Classic false billing — a fake invoice for a directory listing or an office supply order, posted to a business in the hope that accounts payable pays it without checking — is defeated by ordinary purchase-order controls, and those have become widespread. The Canadian directory-scam category has almost vanished: 43 reports in 2021, one in 2024.
What remains is the targeted version. An attacker inside a real email thread, sending a revised invoice for a payment that was genuinely due. That is not a mass mailing, and it does not produce volume. It produces a small number of large losses.
The reporting caveat
Business fraud is under-reported in a specific way: a company that loses money to a redirected invoice frequently handles it as an insurance and dispute matter and never files with a national reporting centre. That would deflate the counts without changing the underlying rate.
The 2025 Canadian figure also covers nine months, not twelve.
What it tells you about the scheme
The control that stops the cheap version — a purchase order, an approved supplier list, a second signature — does not stop the expensive one, because the invoice is for a real debt to a real supplier and only the bank details are wrong.
The control that does stop it is narrower and has to be absolute: a change of payment details is confirmed by voice, on a number you already held, before the payment goes out. Not the number on the invoice, and not by replying to the email thread.
Sources
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre Fraud Reporting System Dataset. Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre / RCMP. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: All Canadian vendor fraud and false billing report counts, victim counts and dollar figures, 2021 to 30 September 2025.
- Targeting scams: report of the National Anti-Scam Centre on scams data and activity 2025. National Anti-Scam Centre (ACCC), Australia. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: False billing at 201 reports with loss and A$2.1 million among CALD reporters in 2025, up 59.6%.