Surveillance, stakeouts and wiretaps: How police build cases against Montreal grandparent scam networks
Police and experts say grandparent scam raids starting to have an impact on criminals
CBC News is investigating grandparent scams and their links to Montreal. This story is part three of a three-part series. Read part one and two.
Over the past four years, teams of police officers have arrested at least 50 people in the Montreal area who, they say, were involved in three elaborate grandparent scam networks that defrauded the elderly out of millions of dollars.
Law enforcement officials say the number of grandparent scams grew during the COVID pandemic and they are only now starting to see fewer of them — a result, they say, of increased police action and arrests.
But major enforcement operations that target larger networks and their leaders take time, effort and co-ordination between police forces. Court documents show that it takes hundreds of hours of surveillance, including stakeouts and wiretaps, to build a case against a major grandparent scam network.
And it can take years to successfully prosecute a case against the alleged members of a scam network.
Once the evidence has been collected, police raid the call centres and make arrests. But they don't charge the suspects yet.
In most cases, when police have targeted grandparent scam networks in Montreal over the past four years, they have released the suspects after a raid and then charged them months or even more than a year later.
This is now standard practice and is due to court delays, police say. Prosecutors don't want their cases to be thrown out by a so-called Jordan ruling, which sets time limits for reasonable delays after which a case may be dismissed.
One case involving a Montrealer named David Anthony Di Rienzo and a group of alleged accomplices has yet to go to trial despite the suspects being first arrested in March 2021.
The group allegedly run by Di Rienzo exclusively targeted American seniors, according to a summary of the evidence against the group filed in court.
Another Montreal-based group, allegedly run by an Ontarian named Gareth West, has been accused by American authorities of orchestrating a similar scam, also targeting American seniors.
These scams also affect Canadians.
More arrests leading to fewer cases
One large police operation called Project Sharp, led by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), led to the arrests of 14 people in the Montreal-area in 2024. They are are accused of defrauding Canadian seniors out of more than $1.2 million.
Cmdr. Steve Belzil, the head of the economic crimes division at the Service de Police de la ville de Montréal (SPVM), said Montreal police supported those investigations, helping the OPP and police in the U.S. to gather evidence and more.
But he said the SPVM also performs its own investigations. Officers investigated more than 140 cases of grandparent scams in 2022, then 188 in 2023 and now, the number dropped to 121 cases in 2024.
He said police action, including those larger investigations in which the SPVM played a role alongside the FBI and the OPP, are having an impact.
"Is there an effect of the raids on numbers? I think so," he said. "What we're seeing in our investigations and from our partners is that there are lots of arrests happening in Montreal. We're there with our teams."
Fraud cases are underreported
Jeff Horncastle, a client and communications outreach officer at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), said in an interview that these operations appear to be having an effect on the grandparent scammers.
Last year, the CAFC recorded a decrease in the amount of money that Canadians reported losing to grandparent scammers — down from $11.6 million in 2023 to $3.2 million in 2024.
That decrease was "largely due to — from what we understand — a few arrests that were done [and] networks shut down," Horncastle said.
The CAFC's numbers don't include money defrauded from Americans and people in other countries, however.
A 2024 Nasdaq Verafin report found that one in 10 elderly Americans were targeted each year, to a tune of $77.7 billion US of reported global fraud.
But even these numbers may not offer a full picture of the scale. Horncastle said fraud is one of the most underreported crimes.
The CAFC estimates only five to 10 per cent of victims actually report their fraud to their organization.
How to help
Horncastle urged victims to report fraud to police — but also to the CAFC to help with nationwide tracking of scam networks. Court documents show that one of the ways scammers try to conceal their fraud is by varying the cities and regions they target.
"The more information we have the better, so always remember that what you could be reporting could be the missing piece of the puzzle," Horncastle said.
The CAFC also shares best practices for potential victims to protect themselves.
The most important thing, Horncastle said, is to be skeptical. If a relative calls asking for money, say you'll call them back and use the number saved in your contacts.
Belzil, the SPVM commander, emphasized the same point — to call your loved one to check if the request is real. "Always remember to validate," he said, "to call the person. Even if they [the scammers] say you shouldn't call."
It can also be beneficial to have an emergency code word shared with your loved ones.
"In a lot of reports and almost in every case, there's an inner voice. It's kind of screaming at you that something doesn't seem right with this," Horncastle said.
"But due to the fact that they're playing with emotions, victims go through with it. If you listen to that inner voice and that instinct from the beginning, you could save yourself from being a victim."
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