In what has to be considered good news for Canada’s anti-money laundering efforts and certainly for Mr. Landa, a B21 Trade (Canada) account set up by what turns out to be a foreign fraudster’s at an RBC branch in downtown Toronto, was frozen in time before significant money wired from Vancouver could be moved offshore as it was previously for Mr. Squire’s wires from Winnipeg.
There may be other unsuspecting Canadian victims in Canada but there is clearly a link here to this same mule account with Mr. Landa and Mr. Squire.
What people are not aware of is in December 2022 RBC under its auspices and quick contact to Winnipeg Police Service Detective Bill Lodge was able to get the Toronto Police Service to respond with an officer to their branch when the foreign fraudster came back to wire Mr. Landa’s money. It had been frozen in this account after Mr. Squire had reported it to the Winnipeg Police Service back in November 2022. Despite apprehending him, and now knowing his real name and identity, he was not detained and is still free to scam other unsuspecting victims of their nest eggs in 2024 as he could have in 2023.
CBC Manitoba does good investigative work here in the story below with regard to these major wire scams, which are referred to as Authorized Push Payments (APP), where fraudsters like the one from the UK are able to convince victims to send money to an account set up for the express purpose of laundering money to proceeds of crime.
Click on the image to read the story or view the video below:
