B.C. investment fraud victim thinks he was able to recover his $735K thanks to similar Manitoba case

A British Columbia man who put more than $700,000 of his money into what he thought would be a safe investment, only to have it taken by a fraudster, says the discovery of a Winnipeg fraud case is likely to thank for the recovery of his money. 

That's because a company associated with the B.C. case is also linked to a 2022 fraud case in Manitoba that saw a Winnipeg man lose more than $600,000 of his retirement savings.

Allan Landa operates two businesses in B.C. — one in real estate development and another that sells arcade games across Western Canada. 

In November 2022, he was searching for placement for his investment money, which he planned to use for a future property development project. 

"I was putting money away for my development that I would need in about six months, and I was just looking for somewhere to store it, at a good interest rate, until I needed it for the development," Landa said in an interview from Vancouver.

But when he discovered his money was taken by a fraudster, he was devastated.

"I couldn't be any more candid than saying I wanted to kill myself. Period. I couldn't believe that I blew my nest egg.… Honestly, I wanted to curl up into a little ball and never be seen again," Landa said.

After looking around on social media and websites in 2022, he saw ads for high-interest returns on investments. Then, within a couple of days of looking at the social media ads, his phone rang, with a call from someone who got his number through "some method unbeknownst to me," he said.

The call was "from a guy saying that he's with HSBC Jade wealth management, and they've got a great product for me. Would I be interested?" said Landa. 

"And I probably spoke to him two or three times over two or three days before I thought, OK, well, maybe I should look at this."

Landa says he checked the name the caller gave him with HSBC's main bank branch in downtown Vancouver and found the person was listed as working there.

He tried to call the person but got a voicemail response, "which sounded exactly the same — thick, British-style accent," Landa said.

He left a message and then got a call back, but would later learn it was not the actual HSBC person returning the call.

Court documents later filed by Landa say the calls came from a man identified as the "imposter," fraudulently posing as an adviser at the Jade division of HSBC bank.