How are they asking you to pay?

Treat this money as gone. Once you read the numbers out, the balance can be spent by anyone, anywhere. The Government of Canada puts it plainly: gift cards "offer little protection as a form of payment."

This is the least recoverable way there is to pay. Once a crypto transfer is complete there is no way to cancel or reverse it, and the coins only come back if the person who took them chooses to send them back. That includes cash you fed into a Bitcoin machine.

Cash is gone the moment it leaves your hands. There is no bank in the middle, so there is nothing to reverse and almost nothing to trace. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre's rule is absolute: never send cash in the mail.

It comes down to one thing: has the money been picked up yet? If the transfer is still sitting unclaimed you may be able to pull it back, which is the best case here. Once it has been deposited, Interac says there is no way to reverse it, and an e-Transfer has no chargeback.

Assume it's gone, then act as though it isn't. Payments Canada says that "once the funds are in the recipient's account, the transaction is final and irrevocable," and there is no dispute process for a wire. Your only chance is catching it before it lands.

A transfer like this can sometimes still be stopped, but only while the money is sitting uncollected - and scammers usually collect within minutes. Once it has been picked up, it cannot be cancelled.

Money showing in your balance does not mean the cheque cleared. If it bounces later - and these do - your bank takes the money back out and you owe the full amount. Anything you already sent onward is your loss.

This turns on whether someone else used your card or you made the payment yourself. You are generally not responsible for debit transactions you did not make, as long as you looked after your PIN and report promptly. There is no debit equivalent of a credit card dispute for a payment you chose to make.

If the cheque hasn't been cashed yet, your bank may be able to stop it. It isn't guaranteed - not every institution offers stop payments, there is usually a fee, and the bank needs time to process it before someone cashes the cheque. If the stop payment doesn't work, you are still responsible for the amount.

This is the best place to be. A credit card is the one everyday payment method with a real dispute process behind it, and for unauthorized use of a bank-issued card the law caps what you can be held to at $50 - most issuers charge nothing. It is not a guarantee for a payment you were talked into making, but it is the strongest hand you can hold.