Scammed out of $80,000+

Hello everyone,

I am seeking some advice and assistance. Someone I know has, unfortunately, fallen victim to an investment scam and has lost $80,000.00+. Let's call him "Tom".

In early October 2024, Tom was seeking a way to invest some money, googling "best interest rates for GICs." Tom found someone by the name of Ryan Lanchbury from a PC Financial site, submitted a request through the site and was then called and was given information and rates for GICs. Ryan gave him a great rate, and advised him it was only available for a short period of time during which time Tom would need to send the money - creating a sense of urgency. Tom accepted. Ryan told Tom he would hear from his colleague, Scott Patterson. Shortly after, Scott then called Tom, supplied him the routing information for the transfer, and the next day Tom went to his bank (Scotiabank) and executed a wire transfer for the amount to the account that he was provided.

Within 24 hours, Tom received confirmation from Scott Patterson that he had received funds. He was given a certificate, confirmation and log in / account information for the PC Financial account.

Since January 1st 2025, Tom has been attempting to contact both Ryan and Scott as he wanted to make a small withdrawal. Tom received undeliverable notifications in his attempts to contact them both by emails. He tried calling their phone numbers multiple times but no one answers. Even the online account information stopped working (which he was able to access up until December 2024 - now he cannot and the link is blocked).

As of yesterday (January 9th 2025) after multiple contact attempts to both of these individuals, there was someone who finally picked up the phone and told my Tom he would get one of them to call me back, but he hasn't heard anything since.

Tom now believes this was all a scam. I am afraid he is most likely right.

Upon being told all this and looking into it, I have since found information on this subreddit (here) that this is a common scam and that others have had similar experiences. On this reddit thread, there is even the same name mentioned (Scott Patterson).

Tom has contacted BMO, as they were the receiving bank for the wire transfer, to notify them, but they indicated they cannot investigate as Tom does not have an account with BMO. Tom submitted a claim with the Police, giving them all the above information as well as relevant documents.

Tomorrow (January 11th), Tom will be going to the Scotiabank branch he sent the wire transfer from to launch an investigation.

He is quite desperate to seek any kind of resolution to this horrible situation. He can't believe he fell for something like this - he showed me all the communications between these individuals and the emails were very convincing and everything seemed so legitimate. I even found the two individuals on LinkedIn - perhaps these two were impersonated, perhaps they are in on it, I'm not sure.

I feel very bad for Tom and I don't know if its possible for these funds to be recovered.