The Supreme Court of British Columbia has ruled that a rookie financial advisor that fell victim to a Nigerian letter scam was indeed a victim, and can’t be held responsible for a bank’s loss in the fraud beyond his personal bankruptcy.

According to the decision, TD Bank sued a rookie advisor that agreed to participate in what turned out to be a Nigerian bank transfer scam. At the alleged scammer’s behest, he deposited a cheque for more than $82,000 into his account with TD, and then directed the bank to wire a similar sum from his account to an account in Hong Kong.

The court noted that, “The cheque turned out to be counterfeit, and the bank has been unable to recover the funds transferred to the Hong Kong account.” After this happened, the victim resigned from his job, reported the incident to the police, and declared personal bankruptcy, it notes. And, it says, he acknowledges that he is liable to the bank for the full amount of the cheque.

The question for the court was whether when he deposited the cheque and directed the wire transfer, he engaged in “false pretences or fraudulent misrepresentation”, which would mean that the debt to the bank would survive his bankruptcy.

The court found that the former advisor, “was unwise and even careless in allowing himself to be made victim of a ‘Nigerian email scam’, but the evidence does not establish that he was untruthful or otherwise acted deceitfully in his dealings with the bank. He mistakenly assumed that the bank would not release funds represented by the cheque until the cheque had cleared, just as the bank made certain tacit and inaccurate assumptions about the source and reliability of the cheque.”

As such, the court dismissed the bank’s application.