How to Report Cancer Fraud and Pursue a Claim
If you, or someone you love, paid for a cancer “cure” that was never going to work: where to report it in Canada and the United States, what to keep, how to try to get money back, and where to find legal help you can afford.
What to keep Reporting in Canada Reporting in the U.S. Clinics in Mexico Getting money back Free and low-cost legal help
Before anything else: write it down and keep everything
Every route below works better with paper. Gather it now, while memories and websites still exist.
- Receipts, invoices, bank and card statements — every payment, with dates.
- The advertising. Screenshots of the website, social-media posts and videos, with the date. You can also save a page to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (“Save Page Now”), which creates a dated public copy even if the seller later edits it.
- The products themselves, with labels and packaging. Don’t throw them out.
- Names of everyone involved, what each said they were (doctor, naturopath, “biochemist”), and any licence or registration number they gave.
- Emails, texts and letters. Print or save them.
- A short dated account of what was promised, by whom, and what happened — written now, in your own words.
- Medical records from the real doctors involved, which you are entitled to request.
Reporting in Canada
File with more than one body, and say in each complaint that you have done so — agencies whose jurisdictions overlap otherwise point at each other.
Competition Bureau Strongest for false claims
For advertising that claims a product or service treats or cures cancer. Under the Competition Act the seller, not you, must show the claim was properly tested before it was made. You don’t need to have lost money to complain.
Online complaint form at competition-bureau.canada.ca (Contact us › Complaint form) · 1-800-348-5358 (toll-free) · TTY 1-866-694-8389
Health Canada For the product itself
For pills, drops, injections, supplements or devices sold without authorization, or advertised for cancer. Use the right form: the Health Product Complaint Form for drugs and natural health products, and the separate Consumer Medical Device Report Form for machines and devices. Say in the first line what kind of product it is.
If a product caused a side effect or injury, also report it to Canada Vigilance: 1-866-234-2345.
Forms at canada.ca › Health Canada › Drugs and health products › Compliance and enforcement › Problem reporting
Your local police Where money was taken or someone was harmed
Fraud is a Criminal Code offence. Ask for a report number. Police may refer the file elsewhere, but a report on record matters if others come forward later.
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre Records, does not investigate
Run jointly by the OPP, the RCMP and the Competition Bureau. It doesn’t investigate individual cases, but reports are shared with police and the Bureau, and patterns across many reports are how files get opened.
antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca · 1-888-495-8501
The practitioner’s regulatory college If they are a regulated professional
Physicians, naturopaths, chiropractors, nurses, pharmacists and others are regulated by a provincial college, which can investigate and discipline. In Ontario, for example, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and the College of Naturopaths of Ontario take complaints from anyone — you don’t have to have been the patient.
If the person belongs to no regulated profession, there is no college to complain to. Use the Competition Bureau, Health Canada and the police. In Quebec, the Collège des médecins itself prosecutes the illegal practice of medicine in court, and has obtained fines as high as $120,000 against an unlicensed practitioner.
Your Member of Parliament
Not a complaint route, but a letter from your MP to the federal Minister of Health on your behalf gets a more considered written answer than a letter from you alone.
More detail on the federal routes, with the strategy behind them, is in How to complain, and to whom.
Reporting in the United States
Federal Trade Commission For false advertising
For cancer-cure claims in ads, websites, infomercials and social media. Most of the cases on our prosecutions page that ended in refunds began with the FTC.
ReportFraud.ftc.gov
Food and Drug Administration For unapproved drugs and devices
To report a website selling an unapproved drug, supplement or device, use the FDA’s online form “Reporting Unlawful Sales of Medical Products on the Internet.” If a product caused harm, report it to MedWatch, the FDA’s safety reporting program.
fda.gov › Safety › Report a Problem · urgent problems with a product bought online: 1-866-300-4374
Your state attorney general Consumer protection
State attorneys general have shut down cancer-cure websites and won refunds and penalties. Every state has a consumer-protection complaint form; the National Association of Attorneys General (naag.org) lists them all.
Police or district attorney Unlicensed practice, theft, harm
Practising medicine without a licence is a state crime. Several cases on our prosecutions page were brought by county prosecutors or a city attorney — one of them after a widow took her husband’s story to the sheriff.
State licensing boards
For licensed physicians, nurses, naturopaths and chiropractors. The Federation of State Medical Boards (fsmb.org) links to every state medical board.
Clinics in Mexico and other countries
Many cancer clinics that recruit Canadians and Americans operate in Tijuana and elsewhere in Mexico, often booked through a U.S. or Canadian office. Report the office and the advertising at home — to the Competition Bureau or the FTC — because that is where your regulators have reach. Also file at econsumer.gov, which shares cross-border complaints with consumer-protection agencies in dozens of countries, including Canada and the U.S. Mexico’s health regulator, COFEPRIS, accepts complaints about clinics directly.
Trying to get your money back
Your credit card or bank
If you paid by credit card, ask the card issuer about a chargeback for services not as represented. Card issuers set their own time limits, often a matter of months, so act quickly.
Small claims court
Designed for people without lawyers. In Ontario the limit rose to $50,000 on October 1, 2025. Other provinces and U.S. states set their own limits. A judgment is only as good as the seller’s ability to pay, so ask about collection before you start.
Refunds from government cases
When the FTC or the Competition Bureau settles a case, it sometimes requires refunds to buyers. The FTC lists active refund programs at ftc.gov/refunds. If you bought from a seller named in a case, contact the agency even if you never complained.
When someone was seriously harmed or died
Where a patient gave up effective treatment, was injured, or died, the claim may be for far more than the price paid. Personal-injury and wrongful-death lawyers often take such cases on contingency — paid from what they recover, not up front. The free consultation services below can point you to one. In one U.S. case on our prosecutions page, a jury awarded a breast-cancer patient $105 million against the man who treated her with baking-soda infusions; in another, a New York jury found a doctor liable for treating uterine cancer with coffee enemas and enzymes.
Free and low-cost legal help
There is no single list of lawyers who take cancer-fraud cases for free. These services connect people with free advice or a lawyer:
| Where | Service | What it offers |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario | Pro Bono Ontario Legal Advice Hotline 1-855-255-7256 · weekdays 9–5 · probonoontario.org | Free legal advice on civil matters, including suing someone and consumer problems. Does not cover criminal, family, wills or immigration law. |
| Ontario | Law Society Referral Service findlegalhelp.ca · crisis line 1-855-947-5255 | A free consultation of up to 30 minutes with a local lawyer. |
| British Columbia | Access Pro Bono | Free legal clinics and lawyer referral. |
| Other provinces | Your law society’s lawyer referral service | Most provinces have one, and most have a pro bono organization. |
| United States | ABA Free Legal Answers freelegalanswers.org | Volunteer lawyers answer civil legal questions online, in participating states. |
| United States | LawHelp.org and your state bar’s lawyer referral service | Free legal aid programs by state, and referral to lawyers who offer low-cost first consultations. |
Contact details checked October 2026. Services change; if a number no longer works, please let us know.
Tell us, too
QuackeryWatch can’t act for you or give legal advice. But we document these cases, and many of the outcomes on our prosecutions page are known only because someone kept the paperwork. If you have reported a cancer “cure” to any of the bodies above, we would like to know what happened — including if nothing did.
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