The value of losses caused by fraud against individuals in Canada has exceeded $16 billion in five years.
That comes from the latest data from Statistics Canada released on Monday.
In 2019, one in six people said they had been the victim of a scam in the last five years.
The average value of the losses was over $5,000 while the median loss was $600.
Most scam victims suffered no loss (38%) or a loss of less than $250 (16%). However, some people suffered far greater losses. Almost 3% of victims suffered losses greater than $10,000, and 0.5% of victims suffered losses of $100,000 or more.
Fraud, increasingly common
Among all crimes measured by the 2019 General Social Survey on Canadians’ Safety (GSS), fraud is the most common crime.
Just over 5 million people aged 15 and over in Canada said they had been the victim of at least one scam in the last five years.
“According to data reported by police as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, fraud accounted for 12% of the Crime Severity Index in 2021, almost double a decade earlier (6.5%),” noted Statistics Canada.
The number of fraud cases has increased from 87,174 cases in 2011 to 168,483 cases in 2021. The rate of extortion, a violent crime similar to fraud, has quadrupled during this period.