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I'm not sure if this goes in this forum, so please move just in case.

We sent our cancellation request for our original application way back in January. After a few months of no word that CIC even received our letter, we wrote to them in March and requested our refund. We STILL had not received it at the beginning of this month and contacted them again. They said we had to wait until August 12 to request another one. NOW we received a letter saying they sent a check on April 15 and that it was cashed on April 28.

My fiancee moved to Toronto in March, but we changed his address in the system not long after (and the letter claims they sent it to the new address too). He payed by credit card originally, but no evidence that they refunded the credit card either. We are afraid there has been some kind of fraud or giant mistake committed.

Has anyone else had a problem with this? Do we have any recourse? I'm hoping CIC has some kind of way to trace their check back to whoever took it =\ We really needed that money for our new application!!!!

All you can really do is to ask for a copy of the cheque & go from there
It's not really a CIC issue at this point, once you receive the cheque copy - you can go from there and contact the bank, police, etc

carel Wrote:I'm not sure if this goes in this forum, so please move just in case.

We sent our cancellation request for our original application way back in January. After a few months of no word that CIC even received our letter, we wrote to them in March and requested our refund. We STILL had not received it at the beginning of this month and contacted them again. They said we had to wait until August 12 to request another one. NOW we received a letter saying they sent a check on April 15 and that it was cashed on April 28.

My fiancee moved to Toronto in March, but we changed his address in the system not long after (and the letter claims they sent it to the new address too). He payed by credit card originally, but no evidence that they refunded the credit card either. We are afraid there has been some kind of fraud or giant mistake committed.

Has anyone else had a problem with this? Do we have any recourse? I'm hoping CIC has some kind of way to trace their check back to whoever took it =\ We really needed that money for our new application!!!!

Actually, it isn't up to you to trace this back, or even to contact the police. I haven't experienced this exact situation before, but having worked in banking and having had a box of checks for my checking account mailed to me and stolen, and forged, I know how banks and businesses deal with such things.

Ultimately it's the bank that cashed the stolen item who takes the loss - and it's up to them to involve law enforcement and try to find the individual who presented a forged item to them. That isn't your concern, or CIC's. What you (or your fiance, whomever the check was payable to) will need to do is sign an affidavit of forgery, and I'm pretty sure that you'll get that from CIC, who may have to get it from their bank. Then they submit that to the bank so the bank has what they need to make an insurance claim and involve law enforcement (if they choose to), and then the bank basically refunds CIC the money they paid out to the forger so that CIC can issue you a new refund check. I'm sure CIC's dealt with this type of situation many times, so they'll know how to handle it.

I think your next step should be to contact the Call Centre and tell them you received notification from CIC that a refund check that was sent to you on April 15th was cashed on April 28th - but that you were not the ones who cashed that check. Ask them what you should do next.

thanks guys, that is very helpful we just called them and they will be sending us a form to claim it as a fraud case. I'm not sure where it goes from there... I will keep the thread updated once we know so that others will have this information available to them.