Law360 Canada (October 14, 2026, 5:08 PM EDT) -- Keeping up with the speed of money, working with limited resources and assisting judges with gaps in their technical knowledge were among the challenges under the spotlight at a recent legal conference about cybercrime and crypto fraud.
The Oct. 13 presentation, “Combating Cybercrime and Crypto Fraud in Canada: What the Courts, Law Enforcement, Regulators and Industry Can Do to Turn the Tide,” was organized by WeirFoulds LLP and featured a keynote address by Ontario Chief Justice Michael Tulloch.
The event, which took place in Toronto but was also live-streamed for those participating online, brought together panellists including judges, lawyers and police, as well as officials with regulating bodies and specialists with financial institutions.
Justice Michael Tulloch, Chief Justice of Ontario
One subject discussed at several points during the morning event was how judges need to be brought up to speed when it comes to technical aspects of cyber and crypto crime.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Clayton Conlan said courtroom lawyers can do a lot in educating judges about technically complex pieces of evidence.
“I think it’s very important for lawyers — civil lawyers and criminal lawyers, crown prosecutors and defence lawyers — to recognize how ignorant most judges are going to be about these topics that we’re speaking about. And I don’t mean that as any offence to the judiciary, I think it’s just a fact,” said Justice Conlan, who used the analogy of a car crash case as a comparison.
“When you go to court on a dangerous driving case, for example, you have to explain certain concepts, of course, to the judge, but you don’t have to explain what a motor vehicle accident is. The judge is going to know what an MVA is. … But with cybercrime and crypto fraud, the judge probably knows zero. And when I say zero, I really mean nil — probably does not know what crypto fraud really refers to, may not know the different forms of cryptocurrency, may not know what blockchain technology means. So, when you are preparing your expert, and when you’re thinking about marshalling your expert evidence, I think you have to dumb it down to the most basic you can possibly make it. … You can’t make any assumptions in this arena. You have to go into the case with expert evidence that will explain everything from the very bottom to however high you want to go.”
During his keynote, Chief Justice Tulloch touched on this.
“I’ve seen how important it is for trial courts to examine expert evidence carefully, and to be clear about the boundaries of expertise,” he said. “That responsibility does not disappear when the subject is a blockchain transaction rather than a medical opinion or forensic technique. Indeed, the more specialized the evidence, the more important it becomes to explain it in terms that the parties and the court can genuinely understand.”
Tulloch went on to say that while a judge may receive a technically detailed expert report, they may “still need a clear explanation of how the expert reached a conclusion.”
“And that is an access-to-justice issue, as much as a technical one. You have to assume the judges that you’re presenting a lot of these kinds of evidence to don’t have a clue of the technicalities of what you’re talking about, and so you have to be very diligent in — for loss of a better word — teaching the court.”
Another topic discussed was a current lack of justice system resources.
Crown Michael Fawcett, head of the Ontario Ministry of Justice’s cybercrime and cryptocurrency team, said this remains a challenge.
“I’m part of the only cybercrime enforcement team/prosecution team in the country, but cybercrime is broad,” said Fawcett. “It’s not just cryptocurrency frauds or financial crime. We’re doing hate speech, online sexual violence, criminal harassment — anything that has a cyber component. So, this is just one … part of it, and so you can see that the challenge … is massive.”
John Armit, acting detective sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Integrated Fraud Awareness and Response Initiative, talked stats.
“When we look at the calls for service, Toronto Police receives over 20,000 fraud reports a year. The OPP receives about 14,000,” said Armit. “We know cryptocurrency is the number one remittance, so we know we have significant challenges, so it’s more aligning our resources that are efficient.”
Armit said that certain members of the force “are being retooled to be cyber investigators.”
“So, we’re taking those assets that would have just sat and maybe worked in the vault at the detachment. These are skilled investigators — put them to work.”
Another challenge has been the speed at which online transactions are done versus the time it takes for judges to sign off on things such as Mareva orders or Norwich orders — the former being a tool used to freeze a defendant’s accounts pending judgment, the latter being an order compelling an innocent third party to hand over information potentially relevant to a case.
“The problem in the arena of cybercrime is that these types of orders need to be applied for, and they need to be reviewed by a judge, and they need to be granted, and that process is not instantaneous,” said Justice Conlan. “So, the friction … is that those things take time, but it takes no time to dissipate assets in the digital world — it’s a click of a button, or two buttons, and they’re gone. … It’s very quick to hide assets … to split them, to launder them internationally, but it’s not very quick to get one of these urgent court instruments.”
Crown Fawcett spoke of the difficulty in “tracing” lost funds, and said the justice system continues to wrestle with new, technically complex forms of evidence.
“I think the biggest challenge that we face right now is that, generally speaking, with cryptocurrency-type cases, you’re interested in tracing the flow of funds for various different reasons. That’s kind of going to be the centrepiece of the case. Tracing is hard.”
According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), $139.6 million was lost to investment fraud in the first six months of 2026. With this, investment fraud remains the fraud type with the “highest reported losses,” according to an information
webpage.
Investment fraudsters may use social media, online ads, messaging applications or impersonation “to promote fraudulent investment opportunities, including cryptocurrency-related investments,” it states.
Online “spear” phishing accounted for $57.7 million in reported losses during this time. Other losses included $28.6 million from bank investor fraud; $25.5 million from extortion; and $13.7 million from “recovery” fraud.
(The CAFC describe these numbers as “approximate.”)
“Canadians reported approximately $351 million in losses to the CAFC,” states the webpage. “While investment fraud continues to account for the highest reported dollar loss, several fraud types are showing notable activity when compared with 2025, including spear phishing, bank investigator fraud, extortion and recovery fraud. These figures represent only reported incidents; the CAFC estimates that only five per cent to 10 per cent of fraud is reported, meaning the actual impact is likely much greater.”
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