Abusers are using e-transfers to contact their victims. Who is responsible for stopping them?

WARNING: This story con‐ tains vulgar language and details of abuse and may affect those who have ex‐ perienced intimate partner violence or know someone who has.

An hour before Bobbie Hallaert shot and killed Angie Sweeney last October, he sent her several e-transfers, including one for one cent.

The amount of money wasn't the point. Sweeney's ex was using the e-transfer to contact her after she broke up with him and blocked him from all her social media and messaging apps because he was bombarding her with messages.

"You stupid bitch," read part of the message he sent attached to the e-transfer for one cent. "You're a shallow piece of shit, trying to lead me on like a f--king clown."

An hour later, Hallaert shot and killed Sweeney through her daughter's bedroom door as her daugh‐ ter hid under the bed. Then he drove to another ex-part‐ ner's home and shot that woman, critically wounding her. He also shot and killed their three children before turning the gun on himself.

Renee Buczel, one of Sweeney's close friends in her home town of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., says she's dis‐ turbed that her friend had to endure these hateful mes‐ sages from the man who would kill her, and that he could contact her at all.

"She went out of her way to ensure all access to her was cut off from him," Buczel told CBC.

WATCH | She was mur‐ dered by her ex. Friends say it could've been pre‐ vented:

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFG‐ BV) is widely recognized as a growing threat. At least 38 per cent of women globally have personally experienced online violence, and this rate is rising, according to a 2021 report by the United Nations Population Fund.

According to Women's Shelters Canada data from 2022, more than 95 per cent of domestic violence shelters in Canada served women who experienced TFGBV.

After seeing a rise in abu‐ sive e-transfers during the pandemic, banks in Australia cracked down by blocking certain transactions contain‐ ing inappropriate or offen‐ sive language in real time. But in Canada, according to the banks who responded to CBC, the onus is on victims to report.

Legal experts and advo‐ cates say some abusers will go to any length to contact someone - and these tactics are increasing as different forms of technology emerge.

"I never fail to be aston‐ ished, no matter how long I do this work, by the incredi‐ ble ingenuity, I guess I'll call it, that many of those who engage in abusive behaviour bring to their efforts," said Pamela Cross, a lawyer and the advocacy director for Luke's Place, a family law support centre for abused women in Oshawa, Ont.

Cross told CBC it's both horrifying and discouraging that abusers can use this technology to reach victims, and said Canadian banks should take immediate steps to stop it.

She says for all our em‐ bracing of technology, "we're not paying enough attention to the ways in which it can be abused by somebody who wants to, rather than com‐ municate in a constructive way, invoke fear in their former partner."

A 'big miss'

While a long-awaited on‐ line harms bill tabled Mon‐ day imposes new responsibil‐ ities for online platforms, in‐ cluding social media sites, live-streaming platforms and "user-uploaded adult con‐ tent," the legislation didn't specifically address abusive messages in banking transac‐ tions.

That's a "big miss," said Rhiannon Wong, the Tech Safety Canada project man‐ ager with Women's Shelters Canada.

WATCH | Australian banks cracked down on abusive etransfer messages:

"Abusers are often looking for other ways in which they can continue the abuse or the threats and harassment, the gaslighting, the coercive control, of their partner or ex-partner," Wong told CBC News.

"Preventing online abuse from happening on social media platforms is one step, but attempting to eliminate violence from social media does not prevent it from hap‐ pening on other online spaces like through a bank's e-transfer service and the physical world."

As part of her work, Wong looks at how people misuse technology to perpetrate vio‐ lence against their partners or ex-partners across the country. The use of corporate technology like e-transfers often comes up in instances where court orders ban the perpetrator from contacting the victim, she said.

This form of abuse can al‐ so be particularly distressing for victims, because they may rely on e-transfers from expartners for things like child support and paying bills, Wong said. Many have also experienced financial or economic abuse -when a do‐ mestic partner interferes with their access to money and may be struggling to

make ends meet.

Because of this, she said, they may not report when money comes via e-transfer and contains an abusive message.

"My guess is that often‐ times people take that abuse and harassment because they need that money to be able to survive."

CBC has reached out to every major banking com‐ pany in Canada, as well as the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. In an email statement to CBC News, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance said, "Anyone who feels threatened online or in per‐ son, should report these inci‐ dents to their local police."

As for the banks, as of Wednesday, only TD Bank and Interac had responded. Both said anyone experienc‐ ing abuse should notify their financial institution. An Inter‐ ac spokesperson said that when they're made aware of any abusive messages sent via their service, they notify the sender's financial institu‐ tion.

"We are appalled and heartbroken to learn of this outcome and the behaviour the customer had to endure," a spokesperson from TD Bank said in an email state‐ ment, referring to Angie Sweeney. "This situation, to our knowledge, is a rare situ‐ ation."

The spokesperson noted that a recipient financial insti‐ tution does not have a way to block certain users from sending money to a cus‐ tomer's email address or mo‐ bile number.

Who is responsible? Australian banks took a more direct approach after noticing an uptick in abusive e-transfers during the pan‐ demic.

In 2023, NAB bank said it had blocked 200,000 abusive transactions in the past year using technology that searches for key words and phrases. Commonwealth

Bank implemented abusive transaction monitoring in June 2020, and said last year that it blocks 400,000 trans‐ actions annually with an au‐ tomatic filter, and uses AI to identify about 1,500 perpe‐ trators each year.

In November, Common‐ wealth Bank announced it was making the technology available for free, to any bank in the world.

"By sharing our source code and model … it will help financial institutions have better visibility of technologyfacilitated abuse. This can help to inform action the bank may choose to take to help protect customers," CBA Group Customer Advocate Angela MacMillan said in a news release.

During lockdown, perpe‐ trators who weren't able to be abusive or threatening in person started using banking transfers as a way of reach‐ ing victims, and the banks identified this as an increas‐ ing area of concern, said Anastasia Powell, an asso‐ ciate professor of family and sexual violence at RMIT Uni‐ versity in Melbourne, Aus‐ tralia.

But Powell says the onus also needs to be on police to be aware that technologybased abuse is serious and can cause harm.

"Often, when there's tech abuse present, there's also other forms of abuse from that same abusive partner," she said, noting police should be better trained to respond to tech abuse because it "could be putting women's safety at risk."

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For Angie Sweeney, there wasn't enough time to report the abusive e-transfer mes‐ sages before her ex shot and killed her last October. Buczel says she hates to think how her friend must have felt seeing those mes‐ sages come through less than an hour before she died.

"She was probably think‐ ing like, 'Oh my God, I thought I had myself locked down and safe where there would be no more communi‐ cation. And now he's found this, like, new way of still at‐ tacking me,' " she said.

If there's a way for banks to block messages like the ones Sweeney received, Buczel says they should do it - for everyone's safety.

She says any kind of posi‐ tive change that comes from her friend's tragic death can bring comfort if it means "somebody else won't have to go through something that she went through."

For anyone affected by family or intimate partner vi‐ olence, there is support avail‐ able through crisis lines and local support services. If you're in immediate dan‐ ger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.