An 89-year-old Victoria man lost nearly $1.7 million to an elaborate “bank investigator” scam that played out over six months — despite clear warning signs that, according to his family, should have prompted action from two of Canada’s largest banks.
His daughter, Jill Anholt, said she still can’t understand how both CIBC and RBC allowed it to happen. “They watched this 89-year-old man pull out every cent,” she told CBC’s Go Public (1).
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The con included spoofed phone calls, forged letters from government offices and politicians, and couriers collecting cash and gold. Over time, Ray Anholt handed over almost everything he had — believing he was secretly assisting a national investigation. Both banks declined interviews with CBC, but said in statements they have strong fraud-prevention systems.
“This has been a rampant problem for years and you haven’t seen anything except baby steps forward,” said Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, in an interview with CBC, adding that Canadian banks “still lag far behind” in protecting customers from sophisticated scams.
How the scam unfolded
According to CBC, the scheme began in June 2024, when a caller posing as a CIBC fraud investigator told Anholt he was helping uncover a money-laundering network. He was warned not to tell anyone, or he’d jeopardize the case.
“They said, ‘We want to make sure you don’t lose your life savings,’” Anholt told CBC, “so I went along with it.” His daughter said her father complied partly because “he and his generation believe in authority. If someone in power asks them to do something, they feel they should do it.”
For months, he withdrew large sums at several CIBC branches. One branch manager froze his ATM access and flagged “unusual activity,” even writing to warn him that third-party transactions often “do not have a legitimate purpose.” But the letter stopped short of saying he was being scammed. Anholt continued withdrawing funds.
When CIBC staff eventually grew suspicious, the fraudsters told Anholt to move his money to RBC, claiming it would be safer there. RBC then allowed him to make a series of bank drafts between $50,000 and $395,000 to purchase gold, which couriers collected from his apartment, CBC reported.
By the time his accounts were empty, the scammers, now posing as federal officials, demanded he pay a fake tax debt to recover his funds. When he asked his daughter for a loan, that’s when she heard about his ordeal, realizing that her father had been scammed.
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Warning signs were missed
Conacher told CBC that both banks violated the Bank Act’s requirement to protect clients’ financial interests. “If they had followed their own procedures, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said. He also noted that banks are required to report suspicious or high-value transactions to FINTRAC, Canada’s financial-intelligence agency, but neither CIBC nor RBC would confirm whether such reports were made.
CIBC told CBC it tried to “warn and protect” Anholt, sharing an email from July 2024 where a branch manager asked to meet with him. RBC said the issue had been “resolved,” but would not confirm whether a settlement was offered; both Anholt and his daughter said they are bound by confidentiality, suggesting a non-disclosure agreement, according to CBC.
Canadian fraud laws lagging behind
Canadians lost more than $643 million to bank fraud in 2024, a nearly 300% increase since 2020, CBC reported. Conacher said the federal government has been too slow to act: “The government should be stepping in immediately and taking quick action to protect customers,” he told CBC.
Other countries, including the U.K. and Australia, have introduced laws making banks liable when they fail to prevent fraud. Canada has considered a similar “maximum liability threshold,” but it wasn’t included in the government’s recent reforms, which Conacher criticized as “much too little, much too late.”
For the Anholts, the damage is already done — but sharing their story, Jill said, might help to prevent others from falling victim. “I think that it’s very brave of him to tell this story,” she told CBC.
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CBC (1)
This article originally appeared on Money.ca under the title: CIBC, RBC failed to stop $1.7M fraud on B.C. senior
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