In November 2022, Allan Landa was searching for a place for his investment money, which he planned to use for a future property development project.
Searching online, he saw ads for high-interest returns on investments. Within a couple days, someone claiming to be from HSBC Jade wealth management called him.
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 an employee.
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.
In December 2022, Landa ended up making two wire transfers to the person who contacted him — one for just over $160,136 and the other for $575,000, totalling just over $735,136.
The transfers went ahead, despite staff at the banks where his own accounts are — TD and RBC — grilling him with tough questions before reluctantly sending them.
The money went into an RBC bank account in the name of a company called B21 Trade (Canada) Ltd — the same company a man in Winnipeg transferred money to in 2022.
A couple of days after Landa's money was wired to B21 Trade, he was contacted by TD Bank, which said there were red flags on the company's RBC account and that it had been frozen. The freeze meant the money Landa sent couldn't be removed by the alleged fraudster.
Landa thinks that was because of the
discovery of fraud in the Winnipeg case.
Landa filed a lawsuit in B.C.'s Supreme Court against B21 Trade (Canada) Ltd., the "John Doe" imposter posing as the HSBC Jade adviser, and a "Jane Doe" who held the RBC bank account where Landa's funds were transferred.
He was able to get a court order to get his money back.
But Landa says banks need to tighten the rules on transactions like his with the imposter.
"They should be probably a lot more strict than they are, and they are very strict," he said, adding he suspects fraud is "unbelievably rampant."
"Every time I go to the bank, somebody is talking about the fact they had a fraud."
His experience left him thinking regulations should be changed to impose a seven-day hold on wire transfers before the money is moved.
But ultimately, "I blame myself, because it was my fault. Period," he said.
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