"Why Do You Need My Bank Info?" — Where Real Verification Ends and the Scam Begins

You applied on Tuesday. On Wednesday you got a message on a chat app offering the role — no interview, no phone call — and a form asking for a void cheque, your SIN, and a photo of your driver's licence "for verification and onboarding." Nothing about that sequence is normal, and the tell isn't what was asked for. It's when.

Every one of those items is something a real Canadian employer will eventually need. Payroll cannot deposit money into an account it doesn't know about. The CRA requires your Social Insurance Number for a T4. Many roles legitimately require identity authentication and a criminal record check. The fraud lives entirely in the timing and the channel.

The order a legitimate hire actually happens in

Here is the sequence you should expect from a real employer, and where each request belongs:

1. Application. Resume, cover letter, contact details, work authorization status. Nothing sensitive. No SIN, no birthdate, no banking.
2. Interview. At least one real conversation with a named person — video or phone at minimum, in person for most site-based roles. You should be able to find that person at that company independently.
3. References and credential checks. After they've decided they're interested. They'll ask your permission first and ask you to supply the contacts.
4. Conditional offer. In writing, on company letterhead or a company email domain, with a salary figure, a start date, and a named signatory.
5. Background screening and identification. This is where criminal record checks, driver's abstracts, credential verification and identity authentication belong — after a conditional offer, with your written consent, and usually through a named third-party screening provider you can look up.
6. Onboarding paperwork. TD1 forms, SIN, direct deposit banking information. This is the last step, it happens after you've signed, and it goes to HR or payroll — not to a recruiter's personal Gmail, and not through a messaging app.

Banking information at step six is routine. Banking information at step one is a crime in progress.

What the losses look like

This isn't a hypothetical risk. According to figures from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported by Daily Hive, more than 2,300 Canadians reported losing over $49 million to job and employment scams in 2024, and CAFC outreach officer Jeff Horncastle noted that losses had quadrupled since 2022. The same reporting cites $22.7 million lost by 580 Canadians in the first quarter of 2025 alone. The CAFC also stresses that fraud is heavily underreported — its own conservative estimate is that only five to ten per cent of incidents get reported at all.

Use the market as a sanity check

The most useful defence against a fake offer is knowing what a real one pays. KPI data on advertised salaries gives you a benchmark by seniority: entry-level roles on the platform advertise roughly $36,867 to $41,000, mid-level roles $71,810 to $74,526, and senior roles $148,333 to $190,000. Junior postings average around $62,000.

Set those against the classic scam pitch — $35 an hour, no experience, work from home, start Monday. An entry-level rate of $35/hour is about $68,000 a year, which on KPI's numbers is mid-level pay. Nobody offers mid-level money for an unscreened remote hire they've never spoken to.

Geography is a second check. KPI currently carries 32 active postings from 55 companies, and Calgary leads by a wide margin with 17 of them, followed by Burnaby and Edmonton with three each and Vancouver with two. The most common titles right now — Trades 2 – Carpenter (two openings), Building Operator, General Maintenance Worker, Building Manager, Director of Facility Operations, Construction Project Manager, Leasing Consultant, Associate Broker in commercial real estate — are overwhelmingly property, trades and facilities roles. These are jobs performed at a physical address, by people who show up. If someone claims to be hiring for a building operator role and never wants to meet you, that alone should end the conversation. You can see the live postings on the jobs board.

Red flags, in plain terms

• An offer arrives before any interview, or the "interview" happens entirely by text chat.
• Communication comes from a free email domain or a messaging app rather than a company address.
• You're asked to pay for equipment, training, software, or a background check yourself.
• You're sent a cheque and asked to deposit it and forward part of the funds — this is money-mule recruitment, and the bank will come after you when the cheque bounces.
• Payment is offered in cryptocurrency, or the "job" involves moving crypto or processing payments through your personal account.
• Urgency. Real employers do not need your SIN in the next twenty minutes.

For employers: don't look like a scam

The flip side of a wary market is that legitimate small employers now get ghosted by good candidates who assume the worst. A few practical fixes:

• Send offers from a company domain, signed by a named person with a title and a phone number that reaches a human.
• Name your screening vendor in the consent form and explain what will be checked and why. Under federal and provincial privacy law, you should be collecting only what the role actually requires — a credit check on a carpenter is hard to justify; a criminal record check on someone with keys to 200 suites is not.
• Collect banking details through a payroll system, not an email attachment. If a candidate emails you a void cheque, that's a sign your process was ambiguous.
• Tell candidates the sequence up front. "Interview, references, conditional offer, background check, then onboarding paperwork" takes one line in a posting and removes all the ambiguity a fraudster relies on.

If cost is what's pushing you toward a rushed, informal hiring process, there's funding designed to slow it down and pay for it. Employers hiring students can access the Student Work Placement Program (up to $5,000, or up to $7,000 for under-represented groups) or Canada Summer Jobs. Alberta employers — which, given that Calgary accounts for over half of KPI's current openings, is most of this audience — should look at the Canada-Alberta Productivity Grant, worth up to $10,000 per trainee at 75 per cent for unemployed hires, the Alberta Youth Employment Incentive at up to $7,500 per location, and the Calgary Wage Subsidy Program. All of these require documented, verifiable hiring — which is exactly the paper trail that protects both sides.

If you already sent it

Call your bank first and tell them the account may be compromised; they can flag it and, if needed, move you to a new account number. If you gave up your SIN, contact Service Canada and place a fraud alert with Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada. Report the incident to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and to your local police. And report the posting to whichever platform carried it — fake listings get pulled faster when candidates flag them, and the five-to-ten-per-cent reporting rate is the reason these operations keep running.