Photo by Sarah Comber Photography @sarah.comber

At Calgary Farmer’s Market last weekend, the Random Acts team gave away prizes to winners of our memory game.

Spring skate season is in full swing, and we’ll be popping up at a random public rink somewhere in Calgary at the end of April.

Stay in the loop. Win at trivia. Wow at parties.

Written by Nathan Iles

Calgary’s craziest financial crimes

Written by Krista Sylvester
Illustrations by Amber Solberg

Calgary isn’t all cowboys and corporate boardrooms. In fact, we have our share of sordid financial schemes that have made (and continue to make) major headlines. 

From slick crypto cons to multi-million dollar Ponzi scams, here are some of the splashiest financial scam stories to hit Alberta’s economic centre.

The Gold Rush That Wasn’t: Bre-X​

This is the one that started it all. 

In the mid-1990s, Bre-X Minerals touted claims of a massive gold discovery in Indonesia, luring unsuspecting investors to the tune of $6 billion. 

Long story short: they lied. The massive economic scandal put Calgary on the map for all the wrong reasons, with tons of books, movies, and international news coverage of the fraud. Billions in market value vanished almost overnight, global investors were burned, and Canada’s capital markets faced a reckoning. 

That’s just the short version: the lurid details of this infamous fraud inspired the 2016 Matthew McConaughey film Gold, and the real story is well worth a deep dive.​

Scam City: Crypto, Real Estate, and Romance

In the age of living online, scammers have become increasingly creative in going digital, giving them access to a much greater number of potential victims. 

In one shocking local case that made headlines, Calgary Police charged a man in connection with a cryptocurrency scam that cost a senior more than $300,000. The con artist posed as the victim’s grandson, claiming he needed cash for bail. What happened next is heartbreaking, as the victim spent six weeks depositing funds into bitcoin ATMs to the tune of almost half a million dollars. 

In another Calgary case, a woman was defrauded out of more than $300,000 in a romance scam. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, just 1,030 Canadian victims made up more than $58 million in losses in 2024. 

But not all financial cons are digital. In 2025, a Calgary realtor allegedly used his professional credibility to pitch fraudulent real estate “investment opportunities” in which he collected nearly $1.9 million from about 16 victims before police laid fraud charges.

​

Tried, Tested and Untrue: Fiendish Ponzi Schemes

The term “Ponzi scheme” sounds old-fashioned, but Calgary has seen its share in the past.

One of Canada’s largest Ponzi-type schemes happened right here. Over a decade ago, Gary Sorenson and his partner Milowe Brost were convicted for bilking investors out of between $100 million and $400 million. This affected retirees and everyday folks chasing big returns.

But these schemes aren’t exactly a thing of the past. In 2024, a man was charged after convincing friends and acquaintances to "invest" in a wine-buying venture. It turned out to be smoke and mirrors instead of grapes. In classic Ponzi style, he allegedly used new investors’ money to pay older ones. The total fraud reached $1.3 million. 

It’s the Wild West out there. Keep an eye on those dollars!

Written by Nathan Iles

Spring in Calgary is that magical time when the snow melts, then returns out of spite, then melts again. Is it shorts or sweater weather? Maybe both? We don't know, and neither do you.  

While you’re waiting for the weather to make up its mind, now is the perfect time to go on an Easter egg hunt… inside your monthly budget. And trust us, there are plenty of treats hiding in there.

Remember that streaming service you subscribed to during a -30 cold snap? (For us, that was Mubi). Still renewing! 

That Apple Fitness+ app you downloaded with big January energy? Quietly nibbling $12 a month away. 

And if you haven’t reviewed your home or auto insurance since before the last Stampede, there’s probably a tasty egg sitting there too.

Find and crack open just a few of these forgotten expenses, and suddenly you’ve uncovered real savings to pad your TFSA, boost your emergency fund, or justify that weekend trip to Jasper you’ve been debating. 

A little hunting now can reveal a whole basket of financial wins. And unlike the chocolate eggs, these ones won’t mysteriously disappear overnight.

Last month, Random Acts popped up at Calgary Farmer’s Market South — and we brought along the ATB Possibility Pot.

We asked our Possibility Pot winner which Calgary business they’d be spending some of their winnings on, and Dessarae had an easy answer:

You could win the Possibility Pot at future Random Acts events around Calgary!

A young girl plays the Random Acts memory game, created in collaboration with Park Production House. If participants found a matching pair, they received a prize.