Canadian band The Beaches are among the artists that have accessed funding from non-profit FACTOR.Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Music funder FACTOR has settled its nearly two-year legal dispute with the Bank of Nova Scotia over who should be responsible for a $9.8-million heist of taxpayer money from its bank account.
The organizations reached a settlement of an undisclosed amount in March. It came two months after Justice William Black of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said he would seek the arrest of a Quebec man named James Campagna, whom filings show was involved in transactions related to the June, 2024 heist, after declaring him in contempt of court.
The existence of the settlement was not disclosed until last week, when The Globe and Mail disputed court officials’ interpretation of the scope of a sealing order imposed last year, which prevented the matter from being made public.
In depth: The (alleged) anatomy of the $10-million heist that rocked Canadian music
The case is not over and Scotiabank will continue pursuing portions of the litigation against other parties.
“While we couldn’t control what happened to us, we proved in a court of law that FACTOR and its staff were not involved in this incident,” Meg Symsyk, FACTOR’s chief executive, said in an e-mail. She declined to share the value of the settlement, but said: “We deeply thank Canadian artists and our entire music sector for their unwavering support as we navigated this complicated process.”
The FACTOR heist rocked Canada’s music industry at a moment when many musicians are struggling and often depend on grants to record, tour and market their music.
FACTOR, short for The Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings, is a non-profit that supports the English side of the domestic music industry, using funds that flow through the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Canada Music Fund and private radio broadcasters. In recent years, FACTOR’s money has helped The Beaches tour on the heels of their massive single Blame Brett; assisted Toronto musician Mustafa in marketing his acclaimed album Dunya; and allowed Debby Friday to make her Polaris Music Prize-winning album Good Luck.
Both FACTOR and Scotiabank have acknowledged that nearly $9.8-million was taken from FACTOR’s bank account in June, 2024.
In Justice Black’s March 5 endorsement of the settlement, he said that Scotiabank would continue the litigation, which is expected to focus on the destination of the missing money, and the alleged role of Mr. Campagna and a company he is involved with. A lawyer for Scotiabank declined to comment.
And the case is not over: Mr. Campagna, filings say, appears to have moved to Qatar. The warrant for his arrest is related specifically to Justice Black’s contempt of court decision, which itself emerged from the civil case over who should be responsible for recovering the missing funds. Despite the passing of two years, no criminal proceedings have begun in the case – one of the largest thefts in Canadian cultural history.
FACTOR has said that the case has bounced numerous times between police jurisdictions because of the geographic spread of the transactions. Though FACTOR had previously indicated to The Globe that the Toronto Police Service had most recently taken on the investigation, neither FACTOR nor the Toronto force would confirm this on Friday.
Still, Justice Black in January called Mr. Campagna “a liar, a fraud, and a scofflaw, deliberately and knowingly breaching this court’s orders,” adding: “It is highly likely that he was a knowing and active participant in the fraud, and that he has benefitted and continues to benefit from the proceeds of that fraud.”
Mr. Campagna did not respond to comment requests for this article. In January, when Justice Black said he would seek his arrest, he wrote in an e-mail to The Globe: “This judge has clearly made a decision already on this case (it was clear to me anyway before this) and is playing crowd pleaser. No point spending another 500k in lawyers uselessly then.”
The $9.8-million was taken from FACTOR’s bank account in June, 2024, barely a week after the Department of Canadian Heritage deposited about $14,349,500 into the account to be disbursed across the music industry.
FACTOR moved about $5-million to a short-term investment account in the interim, but said in court filings that a “cyberthief” had gained access to its Scotiabank account and transferred the missing money to a different account with the same bank belonging to a numbered company. The filings say that Mr. Campagna was the sole shareholder of the numbered company.
The money was destined for a wide range of music industry programs, including supports for live performances, music videos and entrepreneurship. Ottawa did not backstop it, FACTOR said; instead, the non-profit had to eat into its reserve funding to cover the missing funds.
The organization argued in filings that Scotiabank should fulfill a guarantee on its website, which says that in cases of direct financial losses due to unauthorized activity, the bank would “fully reimburse you, provided you’ve met all of your security responsibilities as outlined in the terms of our customer agreements.”
The bank disagreed that the guarantee applied to FACTOR’s situation; some of the court documents show Ms. Symsyk escalating the situation with the bank with increasing frustration. Later filings revealed that FACTOR’s accountant appeared to have clicked on a malicious link in the months before the heist and provided her Scotiabank log-in details.
It remains unclear how much of the missing money FACTOR may have recovered with its settlement. Justice Black wrote in March that Scotiabank was concerned that if Mr. Campagna saw the confidential terms of its agreement with FACTOR, it would “not be safe from indiscriminate dissemination by Mr. Campagna and could easily end up in the public domain and in the hands of persons who should not be privy to that information.”
On May 5, the co-defendant VirgoCX – a cryptocurrency platform that court filings show processed a transaction related to the missing funds – also reached an agreement to end its litigation Scotiabank, which had taken on FACTOR’s responsibilities after its settlement. That agreement’s details were similarly not disclosed. A lawyer for VirgoCX did not respond to comment requests.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, a government agency, says that $188-million was reported to be lost to fraud in the first three months of 2026 – up 14 per cent from $165-million in the same quarter of 2025.