Police found a list of Desjardins clients containing 36,025 lines in a computer linked to a repeat fraudster, reveal portions of documents so far redacted on the massive data theft at Desjardins.
Posted at 3:05 p.m.
After the steps of the media, the court agreed to lift the veil a little more on search warrants obtained by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) during its investigation into the data leak which had affected 9.7 million of Desjardins customers. The allegations contained in these documents have not yet been tested in court or even led to criminal charges.
Juan Pablo Serrano, 36, has been visited twice by the SQ as part of the investigation, which has been going on for more than three years. In September 2020, during a search in Mirabel, the police found the file in a computer seized inside a vehicle linked to this suspect.
The list that the police found contains “36,025 lines of personal information that appear to come from Desjardins and in connection with credit card customers,” according to the police document.
Some of the names on the list were written in red, or highlighted in yellow, the SQ notes in a sworn statement.
The lifting of the redaction of police statements also reveals that the investigators were interested in cryptocurrency wallets when they visited Serrano for the first time, in September 2019.
Online fraudsters regularly use virtual currencies to carry out illegal transactions, such as buying or selling stolen financial data.
heavy past
The other known suspects in the data theft case are a group of Quebec City brokers believed to have acquired the information to facilitate their legal mortgage, private lending and insurance business.
For his part, Serrano has a heavy criminal past: fraud, theft, obstructing a police investigation, offenses related to credit cards… He also pleaded not guilty to new charges of non-compliance with the conditions and his trial must take place. take place in October.
According to the documents consulted The Pressthe SQ also suspected him in 2019 of traveling with a bodyguard known to be dangerous and armed.
That year, Serrano’s profile on the LinkedIn professional network indicated that he was “sales director” at Urgence Crédit, mentions the SQ. This company belongs to Mathieu Joncas, one of the businessmen of the capital suspected of having got their hands on the stolen data.
PHOTO ARCHIVES PRESS
Mathieu Joncas, another suspect in the investigation
Last June, this mortgage broker and private lender was fined $36,000 and suspended for 420 days by the Organisme d’autoréglementation du courtage immobilier du Québec (OACIQ). The disciplinary committee found him guilty of buying lists of 150,000 to 200,000 Desjardins clients from another suspect in the investigation, without their consent.
In a short interview with The Press in January, Serrano declined to elaborate on what work he did for Joncas. “It was very brief. Since I had a history of fraud, I didn’t finish my job. »
In January, Joncas claimed in an interview that Serrano had never worked for him.
Robust search
Also last January, Serrano dwelled on his painful memories of the first search he suffered in this case, in September 2019.
Heavily armed police then broke into a condo he was renting in Laval to get their hands on evidence as part of the investigation. “Is it written in the police report that they dislocated my shoulder by throwing me on the ground? “, he had then asked The Press.
The SQ says it decided to make a “dynamic entry” to him because it feared that he would delete data “in a very short period of time” thanks to his “computer sophistication”.
The police had discovered in his condo “paper for writing cheques”, bank drafts totaling $76,913 and nearly $9,000 in banknotes.
The SQ had also got hold of a check to buy $4,628 in gold.
In January, Serrano assured The Press that the seized cash actually belonged to a friend who was in the condo at the time of the search.