A scam call that demands money today is a hang-up, not a payment. The caller may claim to be the Canada Revenue Agency, your bank, the police, a utility, or a courier. The useful move is the same in each case: end the call before any money, code, or password leaves you. Investigation Hotline is a licensed Ontario firm at 1920 Yonge Street in Toronto. This page is not legal advice. It does not get the money back, and it does not describe how a scam is put together.
A list of warning signs, across many kinds of fraud, is on the warning signs of fraud in Canada. A loss that came from an investment pitch over days or weeks, rather than from one call, is on what a private investigator can and cannot do after an investment scam. Being sure you would have spotted it is its own question, on why being sure you would spot a scam is not protection. This article stays on the call that wants money before you hang up.
While the call is still going
End it. You do not owe the caller a debate, a reason, or a return call on a number they choose. A threat of arrest, a frozen account, or a warrant in the next hour is the pressure. It is not a bill you have to settle while they stay on the line.
Do not read out a card number, a bank password, a one-time text code, or a code from your email. Do not buy a gift card or a prepaid card, and do not send a money transfer, because a caller said a government office, a bank, or the police requires that form of payment. Do not move cryptocurrency while someone on the phone talks you through the screen. Do not withdraw cash to hand to a person who says they are inspecting your bank. Do not keep the withdrawal secret from the teller because the caller said the staff are the ones under investigation. A teller who hears “a caller told me to take this cash out and not say why” can stop a loss that a private file cannot.
Do not install a program, open an attachment, or let a caller onto your computer or phone to “fix” a charge or a tax problem. This firm does not clean devices, and it does not sell that service. If the caller pushed you to install something, stop using that device for banking until your bank, or a technician you chose yourself, has looked at it. Do not hire the technician the caller names.
The number on your screen is not proof of who is calling. A voicemail that says to call back within a day, or a text that says to tap a link, is the same demand in another form. Do not call the number they left, and do not tap the link. Call the organization yourself. Use the number on your statement, your card, a letter you already hold, or a site you typed in. For a tax-payment demand, type the revenue agency’s address yourself and read the fraud notice on that site. If the notice and the caller disagree, follow the notice, then use a number printed on it or on a letter you already hold.
Who to call after you hang up
Write three lines before you retell the story. The number that showed, if you still have it. Who they claimed to be. Whether any money, card, code, or password actually left you. If you do not have the number, write that you do not have it. A guess about a city, an accent, or a name they gave is not one of the three lines. Those can sit underneath, labelled as guesses.
If money or a code moved, call your bank or card issuer on a number you already had, and say what left and when. Ask what they can stop, and what they cannot. If someone threatened you, is at your door, or told you the police were on the way in order to frighten you into paying, call your local police. Then report the call to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, whether you paid or not. The report page is where to report a fraud to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. The phone number published there is 1-888-495-8501. Local police investigate. The Centre keeps the report so later calls can be connected. A private firm does not replace either of those calls, and it does not file them for you.
A later caller who says they are the Centre, the police, your bank, or a recovery service, and who asks for a fee or for account access to get the first money back, is a second demand. The Centre has warned the public that it does not call people to request money. Hang up. Go back to the report page above. Do not use the new caller’s number, and do not pay a fee to a stranger who found you because you had already been taken.
Tell one person you trust the same day. A second call often lands because the first one left you unwilling to say what happened. One sentence is enough: a caller demanded money and you hung up, or money already moved. You do not have to perform the whole conversation. If the person on the call was a parent or another relative, the useful sentence in the room is to hang up and call the bank together, using the number on the card. Arguing the story of the call is slower than ending it.
What a private file can be
After the bank, the police, and the Centre, a private file is a separate decision. It starts from a note you can already write: the date, who they claimed to be, what you paid or did not pay, and which account, receipt, or card record you can point to. The question has to be one sentence. A timeline your bank dispute needs. A written account your lawyer asked for. A son or daughter asking, with the parent’s permission, whether money already left an account the parent can see.
You cannot bring a parent’s phone records, email, or bank access because you are worried and they have not asked. If they still have capacity to decide, the request is theirs, or their lawyer’s. If a guardian or an attorney for property is already appointed, that person can bring the sentence their authority covers. Worry alone is not that authority.
The firm can also tell you that no file is useful. A call you hung up on, with no money gone and no code given, is often finished once you have reported it. A charge the bank is already reversing may not need a second narrative. Hearing that early is a result. It saves a file that would only retype the hang-up.
If a workplace caller told an employee to buy gift cards for a supposed boss, the same hang-up applies. An employer who wants a file still needs a workplace question they are allowed to ask, about the business loss, with the records the business already holds. The employee who was pressured is not, on that fact alone, someone for the firm to pursue. That would be a different request, and it is one this firm refuses when the aim is blame rather than the loss.
What this firm will not take
There is no promise that the money returns. A guarantee of recovery, on a first call or in a follow-up message, is a reason to stop. That includes a second firm that contacted you because you reported the first loss.
This firm will not call the person who demanded the money, negotiate with them, or pretend to be you, your bank, the police, or a government office. It will not enter an account, a phone, or an email that is not yours. It will not ask you to pay a further fee by gift card, transfer, or cash in order to “release” the first amount. It will not follow anyone, and it will not take a request whose point is to frighten or punish a person you now suspect.
It will not take both sides of the same loss. If a file is already open for someone else in the matter, your request is refused, and the first file is not described to you. If the only ask is to put a name on a voice and then confront that person, there is no file to open. A phone call, by itself, rarely identifies a stranger in a way a later reader could rely on. Saying that plainly is more useful than a long search that ends at the same gap.
What to bring if you still want a scope
Bring whether money moved, the amount you can stand behind, the date, and how it moved, in words a stranger could read: a transfer, a card charge, gift cards, or cash handed to a person. Bring what you have already done, in a line: bank, police, the Centre, or not yet. If money has moved and you have not called the bank, do that before you ask this firm for hours. A private page does not alert the bank, and it does not freeze an account.
Bring the decision the note is for, and the date that decision is due. If you do not have a decision yet, say so. The first product may be a conversation about whether a file should exist. A theory about who called can be mentioned after the three lines, labelled as a theory. It does not replace them.
Where scope is written first applies here as on any other matter. The question, the limit, and the rule for stopping come before any hours. The price of that scope includes a short note, or a no. Ask what you pay if the firm refuses before work starts, and what you pay if the result is “call the bank, and stop.”
Bring the date, whether money moved, and who you have already called. Leave with three answers: whether the firm can take the sentence, what it will not do, and what the price covers. If the person you reach promises the money back, end that call too.
The investigator confirms the scope and the cost first. If the request is one this firm refuses, you hear that before any work starts.
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