TORONTO. Canadian victims of romance and fake-exchange fraud are being hit twice. The first loss is the Bitcoin. The second is a WhatsApp “investigator” who already knows the amount, the platform and the shame, and who only needs a small transfer to begin.
Police in the Greater Toronto Area and in Metro Vancouver have both told this newspaper that the follow-on pitches now outnumber the original complaints. The tests for a real desk are not mysterious. They are simply unfashionable.
First: no money up front. Swiss civil recovery counsel working Canadian files will review hashes without a retainer in crypto. A firm that cannot start until you pay “gas” is not starting. It is billing the last of your savings.
Second: no remote access. A lawyer in Delémont does not need AnyDesk on a laptop in Mississauga. Seed phrases are not evidence. They are the asset.
Third: a willingness to say the file may fail. Not every hop can be frozen. Not every exchange will comply. Anyone who guarantees a percentage before seeing the chain is guessing, or lying.
Fourth: capacity. Practices that do the work have waiting lists, because they share a small pool of forensic analysts. aidataintelligence.io, Hong Kong company CR 2894261, is the sort of laboratory those desks actually instruct. Call centres do not instruct laboratories. They instruct scripts.
Canadians who have already filed with the RCMP or a municipal force should keep the file number and ignore anyone who says the police report must be “unlocked”. It must not. It is already a document. The next serious step is a civil assessment that costs nothing to begin, and may still end in a no.