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Authors: Michael Harris
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was “a despicable, reprehensible practice and everybody ought to condemn it.” Giorno denied any party involvement, as did the man who won all the marbles in the controversial election, Stephen Harper.
Meanwhile, in the riding of Guelph, those involved in making the fraudulent calls had gone to a lot of trouble to make them difficult to trace. The callers had paid in cash for a “burner” cellphone, prepaid for the service time, and used two false names: “Pierre Poutine” and “Pierre Jones.” The credit cards used to pay for the robocalls were prepaid, and were purchased from two different Shoppers Drug Marts in Guelph. As NDP MP Pat Martin said after the story broke, “Who the hell uses a burner cellphone and is not trying to hide something? Only dope dealers and Hells Angels and Tony Soprano use burner cell phones.” A burner phone is perfect for both privacy and anonymity. Since users pay in advance for service use and can pay in cash, they are not required to sign a service plan, and no payment record exists that can establish the identity of the user.
The trail that investigators would later begin to follow backtracked to a point just before election day on May 2. On April 30, 2011, Ken Morgan, the campaign manager for Conservative candidate Marty Burke, sent an email to campaign worker Andrew Prescott. Prescott was contacted because he was responsible for “voice drops,” or automated calls to select groups of electors. Morgan, and another member of the campaign, Michael Sona, asked Prescott for the contact information for the company he used for that purpose, RackNine Inc. In the 2011 election, Matt Meier, the owner of RackNine, worked only for Conservative clients and did not advertise. In order to engage his services, you had to be introduced by a current client or be someone he knew, at least according to what he later told Elections Canada investigators. Andrew Prescott was the perfect person to make the introduction because he hadworked with RackNine on other political campaigns since 2010, knew Meier, and had the number for his direct line.
That same April night, at 6:49 p.m., someone purchased a $75 prepaid Visa card at Shoppers Drug Mart on Scottsdale Drive in Guelph. Fifteen minutes later, just over a kilometre away, a person walked into Future Shop on Stone Road West in Guelph and bought a prepaid Virgin Mobile cellphone. The buyer later activated the phone under the name “Pierre Poutine,” ostensibly a resident of Joliette, Quebec.
According to an Information to Obtain (ITO), a court document sworn and filed by Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews, at 7:19 p.m., an unknown person created an email account—[email protected] —using an IP address at the Burke campaign headquarters. An hour and a half later, the burner cellphone was activated through a cell tower 1.6 kilometres from the Burke campaign office. Then, shortly after 9 p.m., someone using the name “Pierre Jones” called Matt Meier’s direct line and set up a new RackNine account. That call was placed just three and a half hours after Andrew Prescott had provided Meier’s personal contact information to Morgan and Sona.
The next day, May 1, 2011, three more prepaid gift cards were purchased at a different Shoppers Drug Mart—a MasterCard for $200, a Visa for $150, and a second Visa loaded with $35. At 9:19 p.m. on election eve, “Pierre Jones” logged on to RackNine. A minute later, “Pierre Jones” accessed RackNine again. His IP address was noteworthy: it was the address used by the Burke campaign. The gift cards were used to transfer money to a PayPal account, and that account was used to reimburse RackNine. By design, the payment email was sent through a proxy server that hides the originating IP access location. Someone was doing his best to make sure that the payments to RackNine couldn’t be linked back to the Burke campaign.
“Pierre” then called the RackNine phone system, logged in to his newly
Meanwhile, in the riding of Guelph, those involved in making the fraudulent calls had gone to a lot of trouble to make them difficult to trace. The callers had paid in cash for a “burner” cellphone, prepaid for the service time, and used two false names: “Pierre Poutine” and “Pierre Jones.” The credit cards used to pay for the robocalls were prepaid, and were purchased from two different Shoppers Drug Marts in Guelph. As NDP MP Pat Martin said after the story broke, “Who the hell uses a burner cellphone and is not trying to hide something? Only dope dealers and Hells Angels and Tony Soprano use burner cell phones.” A burner phone is perfect for both privacy and anonymity. Since users pay in advance for service use and can pay in cash, they are not required to sign a service plan, and no payment record exists that can establish the identity of the user.
The trail that investigators would later begin to follow backtracked to a point just before election day on May 2. On April 30, 2011, Ken Morgan, the campaign manager for Conservative candidate Marty Burke, sent an email to campaign worker Andrew Prescott. Prescott was contacted because he was responsible for “voice drops,” or automated calls to select groups of electors. Morgan, and another member of the campaign, Michael Sona, asked Prescott for the contact information for the company he used for that purpose, RackNine Inc. In the 2011 election, Matt Meier, the owner of RackNine, worked only for Conservative clients and did not advertise. In order to engage his services, you had to be introduced by a current client or be someone he knew, at least according to what he later told Elections Canada investigators. Andrew Prescott was the perfect person to make the introduction because he hadworked with RackNine on other political campaigns since 2010, knew Meier, and had the number for his direct line.
That same April night, at 6:49 p.m., someone purchased a $75 prepaid Visa card at Shoppers Drug Mart on Scottsdale Drive in Guelph. Fifteen minutes later, just over a kilometre away, a person walked into Future Shop on Stone Road West in Guelph and bought a prepaid Virgin Mobile cellphone. The buyer later activated the phone under the name “Pierre Poutine,” ostensibly a resident of Joliette, Quebec.
According to an Information to Obtain (ITO), a court document sworn and filed by Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews, at 7:19 p.m., an unknown person created an email account—[email protected] —using an IP address at the Burke campaign headquarters. An hour and a half later, the burner cellphone was activated through a cell tower 1.6 kilometres from the Burke campaign office. Then, shortly after 9 p.m., someone using the name “Pierre Jones” called Matt Meier’s direct line and set up a new RackNine account. That call was placed just three and a half hours after Andrew Prescott had provided Meier’s personal contact information to Morgan and Sona.
The next day, May 1, 2011, three more prepaid gift cards were purchased at a different Shoppers Drug Mart—a MasterCard for $200, a Visa for $150, and a second Visa loaded with $35. At 9:19 p.m. on election eve, “Pierre Jones” logged on to RackNine. A minute later, “Pierre Jones” accessed RackNine again. His IP address was noteworthy: it was the address used by the Burke campaign. The gift cards were used to transfer money to a PayPal account, and that account was used to reimburse RackNine. By design, the payment email was sent through a proxy server that hides the originating IP access location. Someone was doing his best to make sure that the payments to RackNine couldn’t be linked back to the Burke campaign.
“Pierre” then called the RackNine phone system, logged in to his newly
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