This man lost his life savings to identity fraud. He doesn't know how it happened
CBC
When Rick Hall discovered most of his life savings had been drained from his bank account, he suspected he had been hacked.
The first clue came when his password didn't work. Then, once he regained access, he saw that on Feb. 17 a total of $28,710 had been transferred to an unknown credit card account.
"There was $249 left in the bank account," Hall said. "It's quite shocking when you have bills to pay."
The 66-year-old Halifax, N.S., man said the theft amounted to more than his partner makes in a year working at McDonald's.
Cybersecurity expert Claudiu Popa said it's a classic case of identity fraud.
"We call these account takeovers," he said.
Popa, who is the CEO of Datarisk Canada and the founder of KnowledgeFlow, a cyber safety foundation, said account takeovers have a dual purpose.
"One is to steal the funds that are in the bank account," he said. "And the second is to steal more information because information is valuable. Information is also a currency."
About a month after Hall reported the missing money, he said an investigator with his bank Simplii Financial determined he had been the victim of fraud. On April 2, he was reimbursed the full amount. During the entire investigation period in March, he was unable to withdraw his pension payments because the account was frozen.
"We have resolved this matter for our client, and recognize the length of the process in this case caused added inconvenience, which we will review as we work to support our clients in situations like this one," said Benjamin Wylie, spokesperson for Simplii, in a statement.
According to data from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, identity fraud had the highest number of reports among all types of fraud in 2024 with 9,487 victims across the country. Among those cases, 106 were in Nova Scotia.
The anti-fraud centre said it doesn't track how much money people lose in identity fraud cases because it's usually too complicated.
"In a lot of cases, the financial institution or the affected business may absorb the losses," said Jeff Horncastle, client and communications outreach officer.
"It's hard to know exactly who is absorbing losses, who's responsible."
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