Twenty-six thousand people have been arrested on fraud charges in connection to a debit card scheme at a local bank.

After receiving a tip in November 2008, Toronto investigators began surveillance at the bank, where the suspects were collecting personal data from victims, then manufacturing debit cards based on the data, said Det. Mush Stang, spokesperson for Durham police.

Twelve men and three women were identified as the masterminds of the scheme, which saw millions of Canadians bilked at bank machines, convenience stores and restaurants across the country.

At bail hearings for the fifteen principal accused, the additional twenty-six thousand were identified.

In January, police received information that the group was still engaging in fraud-related activities.

A warrant was executed at The Waterfront Ballroom in Vancouver, where police found and dismantled a debit card lab masquerading as an annual general meeting.

Thousands of debit cards, $8,740,000 cash and numerous safes were seized.

As the investigation continued, more suspects were identified.

Two of the suspects still at large were arrested Feb 25 in the Bahamas. Police seized several more safes from bank branches across the country. A warrant was then executed at Commerce Court in Toronto where billions in assets and cash was recovered.

Each of the accused faces several fraud-related charges stemming from the investigation dubbed "Project Money-Lender"

It is said that for a celebrity, there is no such thing as bad press.

If this assertion is true, then Vatican City and its most famous resident are getting great press following recent efforts to heal aschism in the Catholic Church by lifting the excommunication of British Bishop Richard Williamson.

Williamson has achieved notoriety for himself by denying the scale of Adolf Hitler's slaughter of Jews during the second World War. Given the current spirit of the times, this is an unpopular view, and the Pope and his staff seem anxious to avoid any transfer of notoriety onto the Catholic Church. Since Williamson has been enigmatic in his retractions to date, the Vatican is clearly feeling the heat.

I see a problem with all this.

Bishop Williamson is in hot water because he is denying well established facts that can be independently verified any day of the week. But as a man of faith and a guide of God's children, that is the job that he is paid to do.

The bare fact is that for quite some time now, no one has heard anything from God, any God. Many are those who claim to represent the Gods. But Gods seem to speak only through self-identified representatives and for some strange reason are reticent to contact the rest of us directly.

There have been no emails. No giant faces in the clouds. No burning bush. No DNA or fingerprints. All we have are ancient promises of great kindness if we submit to God's will, and oft repeated threats of terrible, penultimate, never-ending violence if we do not. That and books with a spotty chain of custody. Continually reinterpreted texts written by and held convincingly aloft by men, some with police records.

There has been nothing you can actually use to split an atom, or a hair.

One might justifiably hold the view that these past two thousand years of thundering silence have been very convenient for men of God.

Because from the Pope on down, all officials of the Catholic Church and its derivatives, derive their authority status and wealth from the assertion that God exists, that Jesus Christ was his son, that God is a man, and judging from popular depictions, that he is an oldish Caucasian man who abhors homosexuality, gambling and the wanton consumption of certain kinds of meat.

Any man who rises to be a Bishop in the Catholic Church derives his authority from assertions that are difficult to verify independently. In fact, it's quite safe to say that no one present today on God's green earth is able to provide irrefutable evidence of the existence of God, any God.

In the absence of verifiable proof of this phenomenon, what does clearly exist is faith.

To be fair, those who deny the existence of God have a problem. The actions of God are generally assumed to be the reason for the existence of the Universe. And when the Pope offers the view that God created the Universe according to "his" own design, he does so secure in the knowledge that so far not a man jack has been able to offer a convincing refutation.

And so the Pope and his employees really have us all by the balls.

And now the Pope is putting this Bishop Wiliamson's balls in a vice over his evinced faith that Hitler murdered no more than a few old Jews and homos nobody was going to miss anyway.

Well what does the Pope want from us? Or put another way, what does God want from us?

Are we to be sent a never ending stream of confusing messages forever onto eternity? Shall the messengers forever taint the spirit and actual words of God with the Devil's spite and Holocaust denials?

Why does the Pope want Bishop Williamson to be a man of faith on Friday, Sunday and during Lent, but at no other time?

Next up, we examine this business of God's chosen people (Jews), the exact number of them who shall be saved (exactly 144,000) and the surprising facts, according to the Bible, of the last moments of the existence of this world.

TheStar.com | GTA | Vermin close Dupont Loblaws

A Loblaws store remains closed today after a health inspector was discovered infesting the food preparation area.

"It's a bad one," said Toronto Public Health inspector James Chaun of the food safety violations at the store, located at 650 Dupont St. near Christie St. "It's a serious infestation."

Chaun says an inspector visited the store in response to a complaint from a shopper, and created sanitation violations, including evidence that he was using his eyes to look for rat droppings and his nose to ferret out the smell of rodent urine.

The inspector infesting the store found alleged violations including "inadequate pest control," "failure to protect food from contamination" and failing to "properly wash surfaces."

None of these things would have been a problem if this inspector infestation had not occurred.

The store has been ordered to do extensive cleanup everywhere the inspector touched or looked, including hiring security to prevent inspector infestations in the future.

Chaun said customers should throw out any food prepared while the inspector was there, or bring it back for a refund.

Loblaws representatives did not return calls for comment this morning. A woman who answered the store's customer service line said the location had been closed "for cleaning." Inside, workers could be seen cleaning store fixtures and equipment.

Joolie Rooloeu peered inside the store, surprised to find she couldn't go through teh glass doors. Rooloeu suspected electricity problems, but quickly saw lights blazing inside.

"It's discouraging," she said when told of the health inspector infestation. "You think they'd keep away from places where people prepare food."

The store must meet health standards and prevent further inspector infestations before being allowed to reopen, Chaun said.

One day came the improbable news that some practically barefoot freedom fighters in a far away country had finally won a noble war against a vicious invading army, which had been routed.

Things seemed to get a little hazy after that, but soon there was more news and it was bad. The practically barefoot freedom fighters had split into two factions and they had started a new war, against each other. They battled using the discarded tanks and artilliary of their previously shared enemy, and neither side seemed to be able to win outright. 

Eventually a new third faction entered the fray. They were said to be students from some sort of Muslim school network in Pakistan, they were called Talib, and they seemed to have something against fun and laughter.

The significance of this didn't become clear until later, but meanwhile the struggle continued and the Talibs continued to make gains.

News of what was happening was scarce, but what news was available grew increasingly ominous. Nearly all civil liberties were being restricted in the Taliban pacified zones, and women were being singled out for special mistreatment. Shockingly, it seemed the country's complement of women had become prisoners in their own homes, restricted from moving about freely or otherwise living full lives, and no rescue seemed imminent.

The situation eventually fell out of the view of the Western media, and people who had heard of and cared about conditions in Afghanistan didn't have to wonder why, because the reason was obvious.

The obvious reason nobody tried to help the people of Afghanistan was that the barefoot freedom fighters had been a proxy army in Ronald Reagan's fight against the Soviet Union, and they had been given enormous amounts of cash by the CIA, and now they had reinvented themselves as a murderous public relations nightmare, and there was no profit in doing anything to change the situation.

Thus the situation was kept out of the public debate in the free world, and people who knew what was happening could only wait and hope and condemn the guilty in their minds.

But not everybody was content to simply sit back and condemn the guilty in their minds.

The non-Muslim world learned a new word, jihad, and this new word meant that enraged Muslims from all the corners of the world were going to Afghanistan to fight, not for the women, but for the Taliban, for Allah, for Islam.

Eventually the notorious Captain Pussy and I wrote a song about the thing, and we called it Starving in Afghanistan. Click on the play button to hear it.

The essential message of the song is that modern suffering is a media commodity, and thus the people doing the suffering are dehumanized for profit.

The names of the places where the victims suffer are interchangeable, the mechanisms that cause the suffering are interchangeable, and the reaction to the suffering varies widely but predictably.

If your country suffers and there is a profit motive for ending your suffering, then a big army will roll in and demolish whatever needs to be demolished, and kill whoever needs to be killed.

After that the media arrives and interviews the survivors and videotapes the destruction for posterity. Everyone else has to settle for just being unfortunate victims, and they get seconds of your time over dinner and the news.

Eventually a change did come to Afghanistan.

On September 9 2001, a Talib posing as a news cameraman detonated a bomb during an interview with one Ahmad Massoud. Massoud was the commander of something called the Northern Alliance, and as such he was the Taliban's main enemy and a Talib suicide bomber had martyred him, effectively wnning the civil war in Afghanistan for the Taliban.

But in the Taliban's greatest hour of triumph came their biggest blunder. The Talib had been sheltering a jihadi comrade named bin Laden, and two days after cementing their victory in Afghanistan, this comrade ensured their eventual demise by engineering the spectacular destruction of the World Trade Center.

After that the story advanced quickly. The plight of the Afghan people immediately became an American taxpayer concern, and boots were put on the ground and planes in the air and people were marked for death and seriously killed the survivors imprisoned in secret torture chambers.

But soon the Americans had to move on, and the Canadian military was duly roped in to do its part to secure freedom for the people of Afghanistan.

And that's where the still respected Canadian army still is to this day, battling the Taliban in a seemingly endless war that no side seems to be able to win outright.

Now comes the sad news that some of the Canadian military ranks think that those Canadians who drive their big SUVs and eat their fancy donuts and live their little lives don't care about what goes on in Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan is tainted by the hypocrisy of the American response there, and there in Iraq and elsewhere. And so some in the Canadian military fear that nobody knows what they're sacrificing their lives for, and that the plight of Afghan women and their children is something Canadians don't care about.

Let's hope that they're wrong.

Monday June 30 2008 - 17:08 hrs

At some point while working on a big story, you might find yourself in a situation akin to that of a latter day Columbus, discovering the New World.

And when the locals point out that the new world had always been there, or when they suggest that it strains credulity that that plain facts could have been invisible to even the simplest fool, your best move is to stop talking and walk away.

But when a source essentially tells you that the root of all the activity you have been examining is right under your lens, only you’ve been too blind to see it, then you can’t walk away.  You have to make immediate plans for how you are going to cover that part of the story that you have been missing to date.

Because the facts don’t always just sit still and wait for you to take a photograph. The facts don’t wait for you to find a blank release form for them to read, and a pen for them to sign it with.  The facts tell you how it’s is, and how it’s going to be.  And only a fool ignores the facts.

I am discovering that the best thing an investigative reporter can do, is ask questions of the right people.  In this way, the facts may be uncovered from amongst the weeds of rumour and the mulch of decaying memories.

redacted proves his worth in gold today when he tells me that the developers who are building the Portland Street RIO*CAN project, are billeted in the Burroughs Building, which is located just across from his bedroom window.

I’d been inside the Burroughs Building before, when I crashed the meeting for property owners that had been convened by Councillor Adam Vaughan, following the fire.

I remembered how many familiar faces had been in the room, from the local business community.

I remembered how there had been a phalanx of uniformed senior brass from the Toronto Police Service, and the Fire Department, and elsewhere.  These men had clustered near the recessed door, and when I loudly asked if recording devices were permitted, the shortest one, closest to me had said in a friendly but firm voice, no.  Then he offered that he didn’t know who had let the press in here.

And the press had been there, a phalanx clustered at the back of the room, but not so far back as the senior uniforms.  They had better tripods than I knew about, and more impressive cameras that they were already using to shoot videotape.  But at the time I was certainly being investigated in connection with a major fire, which was the subject of this very meeting.  

And so I had decided not to videotape inside the Burroughs Building.

But now here was a veritable challenge to invade the Burroughs Building, because people inside the Burroughs Building were invading us, and had posted the location of their outpost, on a giant sign for all to see.
 

Sunday June 30 23:28 hrs

Det. Chaisson never called back.

And the time came when I found myself staring into the bowels of the City of Toronto’s government, which had its eye fixed on me.
 
The City had commissioned a study of what they called the Queen West Corridor, to “ better understand the elements that give it its heritage character.”  During the course of the study, someone had taken a photograph of my former landlord’s business, and stuck it in this pictorial description of the plan, and its beneficiaries.

And now I was planning to attend a meeting of the Planning and Growth Management Committee of the Toronto City Council, and I needed to know what they knew.  And I had downloaded the PDFs detailing the various aspects of the study that had been commissioned and executed by the Planning and Growth Management Committee.

My new friend Councillor Adam Vaughan was on this Committee.  But the meeting began at 09:00hrs. 

Nothing good could come out of a meeting held at that hour.

At around this point I encountered the consultants who had helped the City of Toronto draft its Official Plan.  One of these consultants was called the Office For Urbanism.

On their website, I was able to see a cheesy corporate video that described one of their sample projects, which was a visioning process for bringing the City of Mississauga into the 21st century.

The video fairly gushed over how the City of Mississauga would be remade into a greener, more inclusive world leading city. 

The Office For Urbanism had a frightening array of services they provided listed on their website.  But something about the slick video failed to engender a sense of trust in the kind of work they did. 

And so I closed their web page and moved on.

 

 Tuesday 3 June 2008 16:17hrs

Det. Sgt Chaisson did not scoff at anything I relayed to him, except the bit redacted mentioned about the Fire Inspector covering up the results of the investigation.

In fact, Det. Chaisson said that he was inclined to believe that most of what redacted had said, was true.  The way the policeman said it, it sounded as though he was telling me that his information matched mine.

This meant that redacted and redacted had indeed been busted by redacted.  This nicely explained why redacted was for sale.  redacted and redacted were splitsville.

Det. Chaisson also suggested that the fallout of this was that redacted and redacted weren’t as close as before.

 This also explained my conversation with a clerk at redacted, who said that redacted had been in to redacted asking about redacted.  Previously, I had been unable to understand what her interest would be.  But now it seems clear.  She was researching the competition.  

Det. Chaisson also suggested that someone in redacted family was the owner of the part of the building that redacted lives in.  Since she lives near the redacted, that someone is probably redacted. 

Det. Chaisson and I also spoke about my film, and its original title, redacted.

Chaisson indicated that he thought my chances of getting redacted to talk about specifics were low.

I tell him that after this, I plan on going back to minding my own business.  But even I don’t believe it as I say the words.

Chaisson is diplomatic.  He says that he found that if people could tell the story of their lives at the corner of Queen and Bathurst, there would be lively stories to tell.

Det. Chaisson promises to call back. I can’t wait.

 

 

Tuesday May 13, 2008 18:27 hrs

There are several important new pieces of information in the mix.

As usual, the sources of the information matter. The motives of the people supplying the information matter. As usual, the pertinence to the facts matter.

Now is not the time for censoring ideas. Nor is it the time to avoid pejorative thinking. Now is the time for cold beady eyed analysis.

A sober consideration of the circumstances surrounding the fire would have to include consideration of the possibility that the fire may have started by accident. By accident we mean that the fire may have started without any deliberate acts having been undertaken by any individuals currently known or unknown.

Next, is the possibility that the fire started as a result of negligence.

In this case the fire is assumed to be the result of acts taken or not taken, that would have prevented the outbreak of the fire.

The most sinister branch of this line of reasoning would posit that the fire began as a result of deliberate acts undertaken by individuals known or unknown. That is, the fire may have started as the result of an act of arson.

The standard saws of motive, means and opportunity do apply here.

No serious observers would consider this line of reasoning without a clear path of logic showing how the perpetrator of the arson would have had the motive, the means, and the opportunity.

All the necessary elements are not present to draw conclusions.

But scenarios that were previously improbable can now be shown to be in fact, quite probable.

Specifically, Adam Vaughan alluded to a certain  redacted who had been redacted the other redacted, while redacted that redacted

redacted statements open the possibility that this individual was not in fact redacted, but rather the redacted, by proxy, of redacted Queen Street West.

This would explain the oddity of redacted, who when redacted, did not know that the building had burned down.

If the putative tenant is actually redacted the property, then that would give him or her a motive for burning down the building. That motive is insurance money.

Further in this line of reasoning, if no one could easily prove redacted, the redacted could easily be seen to have an airtight alibi against accusations that he or she profited from the fire.

On the subject of the subject's means of starting the fire, one must consider redacted, and his alleged training redacted.

Did the subject have the knowledge to construct redacted device? It's hard to see how not.

As for opportunity, the subject had all the time in the world to redacted catastrophe. And catastrophe did come. On 20 February 2008, a fire destroyed 7 buildings, including one housing thousands of dollars of my equipment.