Internet billing records point to single culprit in robocalls investigation

OTTAWA — A comparison of Rogers billing records shows that “Pierre Poutine” did not use a computer in the headquarters of a Guelph Conservative candidate to launch the election-day robocalls, casting doubt on the theory that the culprit could have been any of a number of campaign workers operating out of the office.

Data provided to Elections Canada investigators has linked a Rogers account to the Internet Protocol (IP) address used by the robocalls suspect to log onto RackNine, the Edmonton-based voice broadcaster that transmitted more than 7,000 misleading calls telling voters their polling station had moved.

Under court order in March, Rogers turned over details of customer information for three Rogers accounts to Elections Canada.

None of the account numbers listed in a summary of the disclosure corresponds to the Rogers account used by the campaign of Conservative candidate Marty Burke.

In an expense report filed with Elections Canada last year, the Burke campaign included two Rogers bills with the account number 6-3219-0260.

The campaign’s Hi-Speed Business Internet Faster service and cable modem rental were bundled on the bill with Rogers cable TV and business phone services for the campaign.

But the records provided by Rogers show that the Internet address used by the robocalls suspect during the campaign corresponded to a different account number: 4-6406-7198.

Two other account numbers provided by Rogers, which had been assigned the same IP address in weeks before and after the election, did not match the Burke campaign account, either.

Also, the court documents show that Rogers also gave Elections Canada copies of the account holder’s bills dated April 22, 2011, and May 22, 2011, suggesting the customer was billed on those dates each month.

The Rogers bills filed by the Burke campaign show billing dates on a different cycle — April 9 and May 9, 2011.

The distinction is significant because some have speculated that any number of Burke campaign workers could have logged onto RackNine from a shared Internet connection in the candidate’s headquarters. That does not appear to be the case.

In the sworn statement to obtain the court order for Rogers, Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews described how records provided by RackNine showed the account that launched the robocalls was accessed through the same Internet addresses as another account belonging to Burke campaign worker Andrew Prescott.

Prescott has said he used his account for legitimate robocalls on behalf of the Burke campaign and denies any involvement in the illegal calls.

Both the Poutine and Prescott accounts had used a proxy server in Saskatchewan and the same Rogers IP address in Guelph to connect to RackNine at different times — and on one occasion, within four minutes of each other.

Although the court filings appear to rule out Burke’s HQ as the source of the Rogers IP, the documents do not indicate to whom the account belongs.

Mathews said in his statement he used an online IP tracing service to find that the Rogers IP address was from Guelph.

Prescott’s home is located in the Preston area of Cambridge, Ont., about 23 kilometres south of Guelph.

Mathews’s affidavit also claims that a Conservative ministerial staff member, Chris Crawford, said he had overheard Burke’s director of communications, Michael Sona, discussing election dirty tricks employed by U.S. campaigns with campaign manager Ken Morgan. Another Conservative staff, Matthew McBain, told Mathews that Sona had contacted him before the election and spoke about “campaign of disinformation such as making a misleading poll moving call.”

Sona, whose parents live in Guelph, left his job with a Conservative MP’s office on Parliament Hill shortly after the robocalls scandal broke. He has denied any involvement.

Mathews has been investigating the Guelph robocalls for more than a year. He has been joined in the probe by another investigator, Ronald Lamothe, who was key player in the investigation into the Conservative Party’s in-and-out election financing campaign from 2006.

Their investigation into the robocalls hit a dead end when they tried to get security camera video from the Shoppers Drug Mart locations where the disposable prepaid credit cards that funded the calls were purchased. The company’s loss-prevention unit said the records had been erased by the time Elections Canada came calling, nearly a year after the fact.

An attempt to trace Poutine’s IP address through the Saskatchewan proxy server, which hides originating IP addresses, also failed because the records had been erased long before.

Original Article
Source:  ottawa citizen
Author: GLEN MCGREGOR AND STEPHEN MAHER