The suspect behind the pseudonym spoke to the owner of Edmonton call centre RackNine when he opened an account to use the company’s voice-broadcasting services but gave another, more believable name.
“He did not address himself as Pierre Poutine with me,” said RackNine owner Matt Meier, recounting what appears to be the only known telephone conversation with the shadowy suspect.
“I would not have taken a client with such a stupid name.”
Elections Canada investigators believe a disposable cellphone registered in Poutine’s name and using the fictitious “Separatist Street” in Joliette, Que., was the origin of a disinformation campaign to misdirect voters in Guelph, Ont., and possibly other ridings.
But Meier said the street address the caller provided was a real address in Joliette, a small town about half-an-hour’s drive northeast of Montreal.
Meier looked up the address up on Google Maps and it appeared legitimate, but admits he doesn’t now know whether it actually belonged to the customer who opened the account.
“I know what the place looks like,” he said. “It looked very much like this was a legitimate person making a legitimate call.”
“It could very well be this is the exact address and they just haven’t charged the guy yet.”
The call to RackNine came a few days before the May 2 election day, when the customer used his account to launch the robocall blitz sending electors to the wrong polling stations.
The customer’s account with the online payment service PayPal, used to fund the voice broadcasts, also checked out, Meier said.
Meier declined to provide the name the customer gave or offer further details about the conversation because he doesn’t want to jeopardize the ongoing Elections Canada investigation.
Meier says RackNine had no information the customer was using the account for the misleading calls until Elections Canada arrived at his offices in November, armed with a production order. The agency says RackNine is not suspected of any wrongdoing. The company has been providing technical assistance to Elections Canada investigator Allan Mathews, the former RCMP inspector leading the probe into robocalls made in Guelph, Meier said.
In court documents filed in Edmonton in November, Mathews described how he had traced the prepaid Virgin Mobile phone registered to the pseudonymous Poutine.
It is unclear whether Poutine ever set foot in Joliette. Records produced by Bell Canada, Virgin Mobile’s parent, showed that the outgoing calls made with the phone came from Guelph.
Sources close to the investigation say the “burner phone” in question was purchased not in Joliette but at a convenience store in Guelph.
The records Mathews obtained from RackNine were listed in a December court filing in Alberta. They included computer files with call logs and other details from at least two separate accounts, one under the name “pierces” and the other under the name “Andrew Prescott.”
Prescott served as deputy campaign manager to Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke. He says all the calls he made using his RackNine account were above board and denies any role in making the fake Elections Canada calls.
Mathews also obtained information for three PayPal accounts, the Dec. 19 filing says.
An Ontario court has issued a production order requiring PayPal to provide records to Mathews. The document will not become public until Mathews files a statement with the court saying he has received the records.
A source close to the investigation says the PayPal payment to RackNine was made using a prepaid gift credit card that could, like the “burner” cellphone, prove difficult to track down.
More interesting to investigators, however, is the Internet Protocol (IP) address recorded by PayPal when the suspect connected to the payment site to create his account.
If the customer logged on to PayPal from a traceable address, Mathews could file another production order on the corresponding Internet service provider and obtain the name of the account holder.
But if Poutine was clever and always logged into PayPal from a coffee shop or public Wi-Fi node, tracking him could be harder.
Elections Canada investigations, who never comment on ongoing investigations, may already have connected the PayPal account to the real Poutine.
After months of patiently following the electronic trail, last week they began interviewing people who worked on Conservative campaign in Guelph.
In recent days, investigators have also launched probes into reports of misdirected voters in Nipissing — Timiskaming and Thunder Bay, where several workers at a call centre run by Responsive Marketing Group, the Conservatives’ main provider of telephone service, called the RCMP on election day because they were concerned about the directions they were providing to voters.
The agency also launched an online form for Canadians who received a misleading call during the election campaign.
Veteran Liberal election lawyer Jack Siegel said he has never seen anything like this.
“They are taking it very very seriously,” he said. “This is not a typical investigation as carried out by the commissioner’s office in the past.”
Siegel was the lawyer for Anthony Rota, the former Liberal MP who lost Nipissing — Timiskaming by 18 votes on election day, said that if enough voters report that they were dissuaded from voting by deceptive calls, a judge might order a byelection in that riding.
“Now you have something that could conceivably be relevant to the seat distribution in the House of Commons,” he said. “It’s one seat, but my God. It’s a seat. It’s who represents people.”
Both the Conservatives and Responsive Marketing Group have strenuously denied misdirecting non-Conservative voters in the run-up to the May 2 vote. The Conservatives have suggested that the Liberals might be responsible for misdirecting their own supporters.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: STEPHEN MAHER AND GLEN MCGREGOR
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