Awareness and education. Those are two words you’ll hear from law enforcement, policymakers and social media giants when asked how to prevent Canadians from losing money to fraud.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve received some version of this message: “Battling online investment fraud is very challenging … we have found that education and disruption are the most effective means of limiting these fraudsters’ damage.” (That’s a real response from the Canadian Securities Administrators.)

So imagine my surprise when, just days after I reported on an investment scam last month - an alleged online “pump and dump” that used economist David Rosenberg’s identity to defraud victims of hundreds of thousands of dollars - our newsroom became aware of an even bigger and more sophisticated wave of fake investment ads.

They were no longer impersonating just Mr. Rosenberg but also dozens of other high-profile financial commentators and experts.

Among them, a near-identical scam targeting finfluencer Adrian Bar, aka “Canadian in a T-Shirt” and one impersonating Shannon Lee Simmons, a Toronto certified financial planner and author, along with several new ads featuring Mr. Rosenberg himself.

One particularly memorable deepfake showed Mr. Rosenberg in a green polo and sporting blurry eyes. (Research from the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting found that light reflecting in the eyes of deepfaked humans was often inconsistent from a physics standpoint, giving them an odd look.)

Aside from the pupils, the video mimicked one of the only publicly available images of Mr. Rosenberg in his “civvies,” the result of a last-minute photoshoot he did with The Globe after a request from yours truly.

The image, taken from our article, was used to create a deepfake of him encouraging investors to join a bogus investment group promising “130 per cent + returns.”

It was one of the most realistic deepfakes of Mr. Rosenberg to date. And I couldn’t help but feel like we gave the scammers a hand in building it.

Vanessa Iafolla, an anti-fraud consultant in Halifax, doesn’t see it that way. But she does think the focus on awareness has sometimes become a cop-out among regulators and corporations.

“Awareness is great ... but the focus on awareness can take the responsibility away from financial institutions, organizations, all these different pressure points in the system where other people can act, intervene and stop it,” she said during a recent call.

As much as education and awareness can create good, they’ve become a catch-all term that instills shame into victims and offloads the burden from social media companies, telecom providers and policymakers.

“The awareness conversation offloads things onto the consumer,” Ms. Iafolla said. “We say, ‘Oh, this person should’ve known.’”

But there are clear signs that government agencies and social media giants, among others, can do more.

Mr. Bar, the finfluencer, said he’s reported fake accounts impersonating him hundreds of times, only to receive automated replies from platforms saying no rules were broken.

“It’s infuriating,” he said in an e-mail.

After a massive data breach at Nova Scotia Power, the company announced in June it would be offering five years of free credit monitoring. When Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf reported impersonation attempts, Meta enrolled him in a facial recognition program. He hasn’t seen another deepfake since.

Awareness matters, but it can’t replace accountability.

Have thoughts on these investment scams – or found yourself falling for one? Drop me a line at mpostelnyak@globeandmail.com