3 days Ago By Erik Pindera
A Winnipeg man is suing Access Credit Union and the Royal Bank of Canada over allegations of negligence after he was defrauded by a scam artist and lost his retirement savings of $650,000. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * A Winnipeg man is suing Access Credit Union and the Royal Bank of Canada over allegations of negligence after he was defrauded by a scam artist and lost his retirement savings of $650,000. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? A Winnipeg man is suing Access Credit Union and the Royal Bank of Canada over allegations of negligence after he was defrauded by a scam artist and lost his retirement savings of $650,000.
Lawyers Andrew McDonald and Marc Lemieux filed the lawsuit on behalf of Peter Squire, a 68-year-old who retired following a career with the local real estate board, in the Court of King’s Bench last week. He was scammed out of around $650,000 in the fall of 2022 by a phone fraudster, he said in the court filing. SHANNON VANRAES / FREE PRESS FILES Peter Squire, a 68-year-old who retired following a career with the local real estate board, is suing Access Credit Union and the Royal Bank of Canada over allegations of negligence after he was defrauded by a scam artist and lost his retirement savings of $650,000.
The lawsuit seeks special, general and punitive damages, as well as court costs, from ACU, and special and general damages and costs from RBC, as well as interest from both. Spokespeople for Access Credit Union and RBC declined to comment on the litigation Monday. Neither of the financial institutions have filed a statement of defence in response.
Squire claims ACU breached its duty of care to him by failing to detect red flags when he went to make large money transfers via tellers in November 2022. He also alleges ACU failed in its duty to report the financial abuse of elders. “At all material times, investment frauds like one perpetrated against the plaintiff and other victims were prevailing and widespread in Canada,” reads the Sept.
12 court filing. “The plaintiff claimed reimbursement from ACU but to date ACU has denied all liability for the loss suffered by (the) plaintiff.” He has accused RBC of negligence, conversion and knowing assistance of breach of trust.
He claims RBC allowed fraudsters to use a legitimate account at its institution to facilitate the fraud, and failed in its duty to stop it by freezing electronic transfers he made from the credit union to the RBC account held by the scammers. The money was then transferred elsewhere. In his claim, Squire said he opened a retirement account at what was then Crosstown Civic Credit Union in 2012, before ACU acquired it in 2021 and became its legal successor.
With interest, the account accrued $650,000 by the fall of 2022. In 2021, Squire claims, he became dissatisfied with the “low interest rate” offered by ACU for the funds and began to investigate alternatives. On the afternoon of Oct.
31, 2022, Squire got an unsolicited call from a man who identified himself as a senior portfolio manager for the Bank of Montreal in the Greater Toronto Area. The man “gained the plaintiff’s trust,” the court filing claims, before he proposed Squire invest in government bonds, which Squire accepted. He and the fraudster agreed there would be an initial electronic transfer of $175,000, the court filing alleges, and after it was confirmed received, a second transfer of the retirement account’s remaining balance.
The phony agreement was for Squire to acquire bonds through brokerage services offered by BMO and the man, the filing claims. Squire received a bond purchase agreement and investment account application on Nov. 4, 2022, which he took to be legitimate BMO documents.
The scammer then sent “scam instructions” to Squire written on BMO letterhead for him to use when asking ACU to send the money to an RBC account, the court filing claims. On Nov. 9, Squire went to an ACU branch and asked a teller to initiate a transfer of $175,000 from his account to an RBC account allegedly held by B21 Trade and gave the teller the so-called scam instructions, the filing said.
He did not know anything about B21 or how it was involved in the trade. The filing claims the teller went to confer with colleagues, then gave Squire a form for the transfer. The transfer was completed before he made another transfer on Nov.
14 that year, with another teller who asked him why the transfer was being made, but accepted Squire’s explanation, the claim says. The lawsuit alleges RBC “harboured” the funds for the fraudsters, who then requested transfers from the account. Squire claims he then went to a Winnipeg RBC branch a few days later, with new scam instructions for a third transfer, but the teller there immediately got suspicious he was being scammed.
Tuesdays A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world. He tried to have the ACU transfers recalled, but it appears neither were, the claim alleges. RBC later closed the fraudster’s account, the court filing says, but Squire did not recover his funds.
Squire declined to comment on the litigation when reached Monday, but confirmed he reported the incident to the Manitoba Securities Commission and various law enforcement agencies. He was unsure of the current status of the investigations, but said his understanding was the money was tracked from the RBC account in Toronto to a Citibank account in Hong Kong, where the trail went cold. Squire also said he was advised a United Kingdom man had been arrested in Toronto about a month after the fraud, trying to access the funds from the RBC account.
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ca Erik Pindera is a reporter for the , mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the in 2020.
. Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and .
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Thank you for your support. Erik Pindera is a reporter for the , mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont.
and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the in 2020. . Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism.
Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider .
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support. Advertisement Advertisement.
