Cryptocurrency fraud ‘exploding’ in Canada, according to consumer advocacy groups

A Calgary investor — new to cryptocurrency and crypto assets — told Global News she is out roughly $2,500 due to what she believes is fraudulent activity.

“I was being very adventurous and very unprepared for what I was investing in,” Isabelle Lévesque said.

“I trusted them. I can’t believe I got caught.”

Lévesque said she found company TrueNorthBit, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, while looking online a few months ago. She reached out and the company was quick to respond. She said she continued to get calls from the company regularly over the next few weeks.

“They kept insisting on talking to me on the phone,” she said. “They wanted to get to know me better.”

Lévesque said company representatives gained her trust, so she trusted them with her money. Especially, she added, when she started seeing returns.

“The profits just kept growing every day. At one point, just within two weeks, I had made $200 in profit.”

But then Lévesque said she was pressured to invest more — thousands more. She said she was told if she didn’t put in about $10,000 total, she would be transferred to a more junior advisor and would not see the returns she had been seeing.

She refused and instead decided to start the process of taking all of her money out — with the help, she said, of TrueNorthBit.

“This lady called me and started to direct me to do all kinds of transactions that I didn’t understand,” Lévesque said.

“The balance that night, the balance on my account that I could see online, was zero.”

Lévesque sent email after email to the company, which Global News has obtained.

In one them she asks: “What did you do to my account? You didn’t call me back as scheduled on Dec. 24 and my account with TrueNorthBit shows $0. I didn’t receive my money.”