Fraud Charges in Ontario: Defence Lawyers for Fraud Under and Over $5,000

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Fraud, under section 380 of the Criminal Code, means depriving another person, or the public, of money, property, valuable security or a service by deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means. The Supreme Court has confirmed that putting someone's money at risk is enough. Nothing has to be lost. What drives everything else, the maximum penalty, the Crown's options, whether a discharge or a conditional sentence is even legally possible, is the dollar value alleged. Kazandji Law defends fraud files across Ontario, from a disputed e-transfer to multi-count employment frauds, and this page explains how these cases actually run.

By Fadi Matthew Kazandji, Founding Partner, Kazandji Law. Updated July 2026.

What counts as fraud in Ontario

Section 380(1) casts a wide net. Anyone who, by deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means, defrauds the public or any person of any property, money, valuable security or any service commits fraud. The provision says the dishonest conduct does not need to amount to a false pretence, and the victim does not need to be an identified individual. Defrauding the public counts.

Boil it down and the offence has two working parts. A dishonest act: a lie, a forged document, a concealed fact, or conduct that falls under the catch-all of other fraudulent means. And deprivation: the dishonest act cost someone money or property, or put their financial interests at risk. The Supreme Court confirmed in R v Riesberry that risk of loss is enough, and that where the fraudulent means is not a lie or falsehood, the Crown does not have to show the victim relied on anything. A scheme that gets caught before any money moves can still be fraud.

That breadth is why fraud allegations show up in places people do not expect: a payroll dispute, an insurance claim that got embellished, a marketplace sale that fell apart, a business that took deposits and then failed. Theft is taking. Fraud is obtaining through dishonesty, which is why the two charges often travel together and why we keep a separate guide to theft charges in Ontario.

Breadth cuts both ways, though. Because the definition turns on dishonesty, the defence often lives in the space between a failed venture and a fraudulent one, between sloppy bookkeeping and deliberate deceit. Criminal court is not a collection agency, and not every broken promise is a crime.

Fraud under $5,000 vs fraud over $5,000: where the line actually sits

The value of what was allegedly taken, or put at risk, sets the track your case runs on. Here is the structure as it stands in 2026.

On the under tier, the Crown elects. Summarily, the default ceiling in s.787 applies: two years less a day, a fine of up to $5,000, or both. At least one page-one competitor still tells people the summary maximum is six months. That has been out of date since 2019. By indictment, fraud under $5,000 carries up to two years.

Over $5,000 the charge is straight indictable with a 14-year maximum, and the same tier captures frauds involving a will or other testamentary instrument at any dollar value. That 14-year number does more damage than people expect: it takes a s.730 discharge off the table entirely, and it makes the offence serious criminality for immigration purposes on the maximum alone.

One piece of good news sits in the last column. Since the 2022 amendments to s.742.1, a conditional sentence, jail served in the community under strict conditions, is legally available for fraud over $5,000 where the sentence imposed is under two years and the court is satisfied community safety allows it. Older websites still assume real jail is the only custodial outcome on the over tier. The law moved.

What changes when the alleged amount passes $1 million

Most fraud pages mention that a mandatory minimum exists for large frauds. Almost none of them quote it, and the wording matters.

Three drafting points come straight out of that text. The minimum applies only when the Crown prosecutes on indictment. It applies on conviction of one or more offences, so the court adds the counts together. And the trigger is total value over one million dollars, which means several mid-size frauds can cross the line collectively even though no single count comes close.

Once the minimum is engaged, the consequences cascade. Two years is penitentiary time, served in a federal institution. A discharge was already unavailable on the over tier, and a conditional sentence becomes legally impossible too, because s.742.1 only permits community sentences where the offence carries no mandatory minimum. The sentencing conversation starts at two years and argues upward from there, not downward.

That is why, in seven-figure allegations, the value fight is not an accounting quibble. Challenging how the Crown calculates the subject-matter, what was actually obtained dishonestly versus lost in ordinary business, and which counts belong together can be the difference between a community sentence and a federal one. The same logic applies lower down the scale, where the $5,000 line separates the tiers: our fraud under $5,000 and fraud over $5,000 pages break those tiers down further.

The police have not charged me yet. They want my side. Now what?

Fraud files are unusual in one respect: many of them announce themselves before any arrest. A bank security team freezes an account and asks questions. An employer's investigator invites you to a meeting about discrepancies. A detective from a financial crime unit leaves a voicemail saying they would like to hear your side of the story.

Understand what that call is. By the time police reach out, they usually hold documents: statements, transaction records, emails, sometimes months of material gathered through production orders served on banks and companies. The invitation to explain is an evidence-gathering step, not a courtesy. Anything you say becomes part of the file, and innocent-sounding confirmations, that it is your account, your login, your signature, can supply the exact links the investigation was missing.

You have the right to remain silent, and using it is not an admission of anything. The move is short and polite: take the officer's name and number, say your lawyer will be in touch, and stop talking. The same applies to employer interviews once the matter smells criminal, because whatever you tell a workplace investigator has a way of arriving in the police file.

Counsel retained at this stage can do things that get harder later. We find out what is actually being investigated, manage any contact with police, and if charges do come we arrange a surrender on agreed terms rather than a 6 a.m. arrest, which usually means release the same day on reasonable conditions. Sometimes, on the right facts, pre-charge advocacy shapes what gets laid at all.

What the Crown must prove before anyone is convicted of fraud

Fraud has a precise legal anatomy, and every element is a place the Crown's case can fail.

The physical elements are the dishonest act and the deprivation. The dishonest act can be deceit, a falsehood, or other fraudulent means, and the Supreme Court held in R v Zlatic that the catch-all is measured objectively: conduct that reasonable, decent people would consider dishonest and unscrupulous. The deprivation can be actual loss or, as Riesberry confirms, a real risk to someone's financial interests caused by the dishonest act.

The mental element comes from R v Theroux: the Crown must prove you subjectively knew you were doing the prohibited act, and knew it could put someone's money or property at risk. Two consequences follow, one bad for accused people and one good. The bad: sincerely believing the money would be repaid, or that the deal would come good and nobody would lose in the end, is not a defence. The good: honest mistake, disorganization, and negligence are not fraud, because a person who did not appreciate the dishonesty or the risk lacks the required state of mind.

So the real battlegrounds are dishonesty and knowledge. Was this a lie, or an optimistic statement that aged badly? Was money diverted, or spent in ways the accounting never captured cleanly? Did the accused have colour of right, an honest belief in a legal entitlement to act as they did? Files built on transactions frequently look worse in a police summary than they do once the full record, and the full business context, is on the table. Making the Crown prove every element to the criminal standard is the job.

The fraud allegations we see most across Ontario

No two fraud files are identical, but after years of defending them, the same patterns keep arriving at our door. We describe them here as experience, not statistics.

• Employment and payroll files. Expense claims, invoicing schemes, payroll manipulation, inventory that did not reconcile. These are breach-of-trust allegations, usually built on months of internal investigation before police ever hear about them.
• Credit card and e-transfer files. Disputed card use, compromised accounts, interception of transfers. The forensic trail looks damning until someone asks who actually had access to the device or credentials. Where accounts and identity documents are involved, the file can overlap with the work covered on our identity theft page.
• Marketplace and deposit files. Online sales that fell through, contractors who took deposits and did not finish, private deals gone sour. Many of these are civil disputes wearing a criminal costume, and saying so, with evidence, is a real defence path.
• Benefits and insurance files. Claims alleged to be inflated or fabricated, benefits collected while circumstances changed. Intent and knowledge are usually the live issues.
• Romance-adjacent and transfer files. Money moved between people in a relationship that later gets recast as deception. Untangling gift, loan and lie takes documents and patience.

The common thread: fraud files are document cases. The Crown's theory sits in a paper record, which means the defence can sit there too, and a file that looks bleak in a synopsis often reads differently once every statement and email is in front of us.

Forged paperwork often rides along with a fraud count. Where a signature, a cheque or an identity document is said to be false, the Crown will usually lay a separate charge for it, and we deal with those files on our page about forgery charges in Toronto.

Will I have to pay the money back, and does paying help?

Both halves of that question matter, so take them in turn.

Will you have to pay? Courts can order restitution under s.738 on conviction or discharge, on the Crown's application or the court's own motion. For property lost, damaged or destroyed, the order can run up to replacement value, but only where the amount is readily ascertainable. Contested, speculative or tangled losses are poor candidates for restitution orders, and we argue exactly that where the numbers are soft. Under s.739, an order can also compensate an innocent third party who bought the property or lent money against it in good faith. A restitution order is enforceable like a civil judgment, and it does not disappear when the sentence ends.

Does paying help? Usually, yes, and sometimes a great deal. Voluntary repayment is strong mitigation. It removes the ongoing loss, it signals responsibility, and in resolution discussions it can move a file from a jail position toward a community one, or support a withdrawal on the right facts. But repayment is not a get-out-of-prosecution card. The charging decision belongs to the Crown, the case is about dishonesty rather than debt, and a complainant who has been repaid cannot call off the prosecution.

One caution before anyone writes a cheque: how and when money moves can carry admissions with it, and there is often a parallel civil claim or the prospect of one. Repayment should be planned with counsel so that the mitigation lands without handing the Crown, or a civil plaintiff, anything extra. Done properly it is one of the most useful tools in a fraud file. Done impulsively it can hurt.

Can I stay out of jail on a fraud charge?

Often, yes. The honest version of the answer depends on the tier, the trust involved, and the value.

Parliament has told judges what makes a fraud worse. Section 380.1 lists mandatory aggravating considerations: the magnitude, complexity, duration and degree of planning; any adverse effect on the Canadian economy, financial system or investor confidence; a large number of victims; a significant impact on victims given their age, health or financial situation; taking advantage of the high regard in which the offender was held in the community; breach of a licensing requirement or professional standard; and concealing or destroying records. The court must put the aggravating and mitigating circumstances on the record.

Section 380.1(2) then removes an instinct many clients arrive with. Your employment, your skills, your status and your reputation cannot count as mitigation if they were relevant to, contributed to, or were used in committing the fraud. The pillar-of-the-community argument is statutorily dead where the standing did the defrauding.

Within that framework, the outcomes range widely. On fraud under $5,000, first-time files resolve through diversion where the Crown offers it, discharges, probation and fines, and plenty never become convictions at all. On fraud over $5,000, a discharge is off the table, but since 2022 a conditional sentence is legally available where the sentence lands under two years, and probation and fines remain options in the right case. Jail becomes realistic where trust was breached, the value is high, or the conduct ran for years, and above one million dollars the mandatory minimum sets the floor at two years.

We do not publish sentencing ranges on this page because no honest lawyer can quote your number without your facts. What we can say is that restitution, the value actually proven, and the story of how the conduct happened move these outcomes more than anything else, and all three can be worked on.

What a fraud finding does to your job, your licence and your future

For most working people, the sentence is only half the story. The finding itself follows you, and one order in particular deserves more attention than it gets.

Read that scope again: any employment, any volunteer role, authority over anyone else's money or property. For bookkeepers, managers, real estate and financial professionals, treasurers of the local hockey club, that order can outlast the sentence and quietly end a career. Whether the Crown seeks one, and how it is framed, belongs on the negotiating table from the start.

Beyond the order, the practical fallout runs through screening. A conviction creates a record that background checks for positions of trust will find, and even a pending charge can surface on enhanced checks. People licensed or regulated in their professions typically face reporting obligations and potential discipline through their own bodies, a track that runs separately from the criminal case and needs its own advice. None of this argues for despair. It argues for running the criminal file with the career consequences in view, which is how we run ours.

How a fraud file actually moves through Toronto and York Region courts

Most people charged with fraud are released by police on an undertaking with conditions, often including no contact with the complainant and, in employment files, no attendance at the workplace. If police hold you for bail in Toronto, the hearing runs at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre, 2201 Finch Avenue West. York Region files are heard in Newmarket at 50 Eagle Street West.

From there, Toronto charges proceed in the Ontario Court of Justice at 10 Armoury Street, and the largest indictments can end up in the Superior Court of Justice at 361 University Avenue. York Region matters, including Markham and Vaughan files, run through the Newmarket courthouse; our Markham fraud lawyer page covers that practice in detail.

Expect a slower rhythm than an assault file. Fraud disclosure is heavy: banking records, device extractions, accounting spreadsheets, witness statements from auditors and investigators, sometimes forensic accounting reports. Reviewing it properly takes time, and the review is where defences get found, so rushing it serves nobody. Judicial pre-trials, where counsel and a judge talk resolution and trial management, matter more in fraud files than almost anywhere else, because positions on value, restitution and the realistic shape of a trial get tested there.

The long timeline is not dead air. It is when restitution gets structured, when the value gets challenged, and when the file gets repositioned. The cases that resolve well are the ones where the defence used the clock instead of watching it.

What fraud charges mean if you are not a Canadian citizen

For permanent residents and foreign nationals, fraud charges carry a second jeopardy that has nothing to do with jail: inadmissibility.

Under s.36(1)(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, serious criminality includes conviction for an offence punishable by a maximum of at least 10 years. Fraud over $5,000 carries a 14-year maximum, so a conviction on the over tier meets the definition by itself, whatever sentence follows. A permanent resident convicted of it faces a removal order, and the length of any jail sentence affects whether an appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division survives.

Fraud under $5,000 carries a two-year indictable maximum, so it does not reach the 10-year branch. The exposure there runs through the sentence: a term of imprisonment of more than six months also constitutes serious criminality. This is where the Supreme Court's decision in Tran v Canada, 2017 SCC 50, does real work. Tran holds that a conditional sentence order, served in the community, is not imprisonment for that test, and that the relevant maximum is the one in force when the offence was committed. Structuring a resolution as a conditional sentence rather than a short jail term, or keeping custody at or under six months, can be the difference between staying and removal.

Foreign nationals face a lower bar still: ordinary criminality under s.36(2) can be triggered by a single indictable-punishable conviction, and hybrid offences are deemed indictable for this purpose even when the Crown proceeds summarily. The short version: in any fraud file involving a non-citizen, the immigration analysis has to sit beside the criminal strategy from day one, and in our practice it does.

How Kazandji Law defends fraud charges

Fraud defence is document work before it is courtroom work. We start by rebuilding the money trail ourselves rather than accepting the investigator's version of it, because summaries written to justify charges have a habit of flattening context: authorizations that existed, repayments that were made, accounting practices that explain what a synopsis calls concealment.

From there, the attack points are the elements. Dishonesty: was there an actual lie or unscrupulous act, or a business practice the complainant misunderstood? Knowledge: can the Crown prove, to the criminal standard, what you subjectively understood at the time? Value: is the $5,000 or $1,000,000 line actually crossed on evidence rather than on a spreadsheet's say-so, and do the counts truly aggregate? Each of those fights changes the tier, the sentence exposure, or the outcome outright.

Charter scrutiny runs in parallel. Fraud investigations lean on production orders, search warrants and device seizures, and each is only as good as the paperwork behind it. Where grounds were thin or the execution overreached, exclusion applications follow, and a fraud case that loses its documents usually loses its way.

And because most files resolve, we position them to resolve well: restitution structured to do the most good, the aggravating factors answered rather than ignored, immigration and employment consequences built into the ask. Our case results page shows how that plays out.

Why people across Ontario call Kazandji Law

Kazandji Law is a criminal defence firm with deep experience in financial allegations, led by founding partner Fadi Matthew Kazandji. The firm runs four offices so clients are never far from counsel:

• Toronto, head office: 180 John St, Unit 320, minutes from the Ontario Court of Justice at 10 Armoury Street and the Superior Court at 361 University Avenue.
• Thornhill: 7191 Yonge St, Suite 310, serving Markham, Vaughan, Richmond Hill and the York Region files heading to Newmarket.
• North York: covering the northern parts of the city and bail matters at 2201 Finch Avenue West.
• Oakville: for Halton and the western GTA.

Consultations are free and confidential, including at the pre-charge stage, when the right advice matters most. Beyond fraud, the firm defends everything from assault charges to regulatory matters, and our criminal defence hub collects the full practice.

Charged with fraud? What to do in the first 30 days

The opening weeks of a fraud file set its trajectory. Some of what follows is generic good sense, and all of it comes from watching files go right and go wrong.

• Stop talking about the allegations. Not to the complainant, not to co-workers, not in texts, and never to investigators without counsel. Fraud cases are built from words and records, and explanations given early, without the documents in hand, harden into exhibits.
• Preserve everything. Emails, invoices, bank statements, contracts, texts. In a document case, the record that helps you is often one nobody has looked for yet, and it is easier to keep than to recover.
• Write your own timeline while it is fresh. Dates, meetings, who approved what. Give it to your lawyer and nobody else, so it stays privileged.
• Follow every release condition to the letter. A breach charge is the fastest way to make a defensible fraud file worse, and conditions that genuinely interfere with work or family can usually be varied properly instead of ignored.
• Do not repay anything yet. Not because repayment is wrong, but because unplanned repayment can carry admissions. Structure it with counsel so it helps instead of hurts.
• Bring the paper to the first meeting. The consultation is free, and it is far more useful when the documents are on the table.

None of this replaces advice on your specific file. It keeps doors open until you get it.

Fraud charges in Ontario: frequently asked questions

This page is general legal information for people facing fraud charges in Ontario, not legal advice about your specific case. Every file turns on its own facts. Criminal Code and IRPA references are current to July 2026. If you have been charged or are under investigation, get advice on your own situation. Kazandji Law, 180 John St, Unit 320, Toronto, Ontario. Free consultations: 647-588-3234.