The value of losses attributable to fraud against individuals has exceeded $16 billion in five years in Canada.
This is revealed by the latest Statistics Canada data released on Monday.
In 2019, one in six people said they had been the victim of fraud in the previous five years.
The average value of losses was over $5,000, while the median loss was $600.
Most victims of fraud suffered no loss (38%) or a loss of less than $250 (16%). However, some people suffered much greater losses. Nearly 3% of victims suffered losses worth more than $10,000, and 0.5% of victims suffered losses of $100,000 or more.
Fraud, more and more frequent
Among all the crimes measured during the General Social Survey on Canadians’ Safety (GSS) in 2019, fraud is the most frequent offence.
Just over 5 million people aged 15 and over in Canada reported being victims of at least one fraud in the previous five years.
“According to police-reported data through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, fraud accounted for 12% of the Crime Severity Index in 2021, nearly double from 10 years earlier (6.5%),” Statistics Canada noted.
Thus, the number of frauds 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.