Fraudsters scam thousands of dollars from Bridgewater courthouse using fake cheques

Shaina Luck · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 22, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

Fraud artists passed much than $35,000 successful fake cheques successful a months-long strategy against the Bridgewater courthouse, an interior provincial probe revealed. 

The fraud was discovered successful October 2023 and reported to police. But the afloat scope of the occupation was not understood until astir a twelvemonth later, aft provincial auditors analyzed 2 slope accounts belonging to the courthouse. 

Documents precocious obtained by CBC News done an access to accusation petition outlined the investigation and the changes that were recommended to the mode the courthouse pays its bills. 

According to the study from provincial auditors, an introspection of the play betwixt April 2023 and January 2024 turned up six fake cheques totalling $20,150. 

Another 4 fake cheques totalling $15,143 were discovered that were passed extracurricular of that period. 

"The incidence of fraudulent cheques is expected to proceed wrong [Bridgewater Justice Centre], arsenic demonstrated by ongoing fraudulent cheques being detected during the drafting of this report," the investigators wrote. 

No wrongdoing by staff

The Justice Department declined to bash an interrogation to sermon the fraud, but said successful a connection that unit "immediately alerted police, conducted an audit, and enactment caller safeguards successful place" erstwhile the fake cheques were detected.

"The audit determined determination was nary wrongdoing by Justice Centre staff," the department's email continued. "Most of the funds progressive successful this fraud were recovered."

Bridgewater Police Deputy Chief Danny Macphee told CBC News the probe is inactive ongoing, and they are moving with constabulary successful Ontario and Alberta to chase the fraudsters.

"With a batch of these frauds, radical acceptable up either accounts with fake IDs oregon fake names," helium said.

"That wealth tin beryllium moved aggregate times into antithetic slope accounts that are closed fundamentally the 2nd the fraud occurs. So determination is simply a batch of enactment to those that constabulary officers crossed the state are dealing with."

"You bash a accumulation bid for 1 bank, that leads you to a 2nd bank, to a 3rd and fourth, and sometimes that's done aggregate IDs, aggregate aliases." 

Most wealth recovered

According to the auditors, Scotiabank was "lenient" erstwhile the fraud was discovered and reimbursed astir of the wealth lost. However, the slope would not reimburse 2 cheques totalling $6,640.

The Scotiabank relationship was utilized chiefly for cheques made retired to idiosyncratic citizens. According to the report, the relationship had written cheques totalling $1,314,430, of which lone a tiny fraction were the fake cheques.

The study recovered "strong indicators" that idiosyncratic altered a azygous authentic cheque to make the fake cheques.

The courthouse besides has a chequing account with Royal Bank which it uses chiefly for regular vendors. 

The auditors recovered cheques were the "sole method to disburse funds" wrong the RBC and Scotiabank accounts, and recommended the courthouse determination to outgo methods similar nonstop deposit. 

The auditors besides recovered the Bridgewater Justice Centre didn't person wide guidance connected however to woody with stale-dated cheques, which are cheques dated much than six months successful the future. 

The probe turned up 24 stale-dated cheques, each valued astatine much than $8,000. The dates connected these cheques ranged from six months to much than six years successful the future.  

Common signifier of outgo fraud

According to the Association of Financial Professionals, a U.S.-based organization with branches successful Canada, cheques are inactive wide favoured by businesses and authorities organizations but are besides fashionable targets for fraud. 

Each year, the association does a survey of its members astir outgo scams and frauds. More than 60 per cent of respondents to its astir caller survey, released connected April 15, said they experienced existent oregon attempted fraud by cheque successful the past year. 

"Two years ago, it was 65 per cent. This year, 63 per cent," said Mariam Lamech, the organization's manager of survey research. 

"We haven't seen that spell away. So that is inactive precise extended and it's prevailing."

Andrew Deichler, who is besides a manager with the association, said helium thinks radical are progressively connected their defender against email scams, which sometimes incorporate deep fakes oregon artificial quality to look much realistic. 

"But connected the different hand, due to the fact that it's getting much hard to fool radical successful much high-tech, high-cost scams similar that, you spot different fraudsters benignant of reverting to aged methods due to the fact that they cognize cheque fraud works," Deichler said. 

"They cognize it's not hard to do."

Deichler said cheques tin beryllium stolen retired of the message and faked. He recommends minimizing the usage of cheques wherever possible. 

Safeguards enactment successful place

The province's interior auditors wrote that "corrective measures person not been effective" and the relationship "remains astatine hazard from aboriginal fraudulent cheques." 

The auditors wrote that earlier the cheque fraud was discovered, courthouse unit were doing a monthly reconciliation of the accounts by comparing slope statements with disbursed cheques. 

After the fraud was found, unit moved to regular monitoring, which the auditors said improved the quality to drawback fakes. However, the auditors warned the accounts are apt inactive astatine hazard of fraud successful the future.