Ashley Martins is a student living on a fixed budget. Last July, she received a call claiming her bank accounts had been compromised. The caller said her bank cards were needed as evidence and a courier would come to pick them up.
Martins says she called the number on the back of her debit card and spoke with a Scotiabank representative.
“They said, yeah, no problem. Hand it to them,” she tells CityNews.
Within a few hours of handing over her cards, whoever took them went on a shopping spree to the tune of $14,000 – not only with her cards but also her line of credit.
“How did they have access to my line of credit? I didn’t give that card, and I never gave my PIN,” she explained.
After what they call a thorough investigation into her case, Scotiabank has put the blame on her.
“That’s you; you basically gave permission,” she was told. “Excuse me? But I called you, I called the number on the back of my card. But I was liable.”
Martins joins a growing list of bank fraud victims, more than 25,000 last year alone in Canada.
“There should be safeguards on the bank side to not allow the account to be drained by the fraudsters, and the banks continually fail to do that,” said Duff Conacher with Democracy Watch, which is one of many pushing the federal government to adopt new and stronger banking laws.
“Essentially, they require the money to be given back to the customer unless the financial institution can show that they did their due diligence to protect the customer.”
Conacher says the federal government had the chance to do that with Bill C-15, the Budget Implementation Act, which was passed on March 26, 2026, and ushered in significant overhauls to Canadian banking and financial laws. However, he points out that both the Liberals and Conservatives voted against amendments to those banking laws.
In response, a Department of Finance official says Bill C-15 was a first step in combating bank fraud, with additional measures to come within the next year that could include measures to “prevent, detect, and respond to fraud losses when they occur; to strengthen public awareness about fraud; and to support law enforcement’s ability to combat fraud.”
Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology held hearings and is gathering testimony to look at strengthening current bank laws.
“Hopefully that committee report will also call for more action and that will put pressure on the Liberals as well,” said Conacher.
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