. 988 words, with 473 in optional trim.
EDS: Adds react.
The mysterious “Pierre Poutine” who launched misleading robocalls into Guelph, Ont., on election day also recorded another voice message in support of the local Liberal candidate in the riding.
Court documents filed Friday also show that the suspect at the centre of the vote suppression scandal referred to someone in the Conservative Party when he spoke to the owner of RackNine, the Edmonton voice-broadcasting company used to send the robocalls.
The apparently fake Liberal message was uploaded to RackNine, along with a misdirecting fake Elections Canada call, but never sent.
The second recording was revealed in a sworn statement by Al Mathews, the Elections Canada investigator leading the probe into more than 7,600 robocalls ? more than previously reported ? directing voters to the wrong polling stations on election day.
According to Mathews, the second message “had the appearance of being in support of the Frank Valeriote (Liberal Party) campaign in Guelph. The voice sounded to me as though computer generated rather than a script read by a person.”
Poutine had set up a call display number with RackNine, also not used, that corresponded to Valeriote’s campaign office during the election. The suspect later deleted the Valeriote call but the recording was retained on the company’s server and provided to Elections Canada.
The strange call in support of Valeriote raises the possibility that Poutine had intended to use the synthesized voice message to annoy the Liberal candidate’s backers. In other ridings, numerous voters have complained of live calls, some of them rude or aggressive, that purported to come from Liberal candidates’ campaigns late at night or early in the morning.
A spokesman for Valeriote said Friday that their campaign has never used RackNine.
“At no point during the election did Frank Valeriote’s campaign use the services of RackNine, nor was the campaign aware of the company until recently,” said Daniel Arsenault, the MP’s constituency assistant.
“Elections Canada officials have played the recording to Mr. Valeriote in a recent meeting in which he confirmed that the recording was not from his campaign and is unaware who made it. Mr. Valeriote and his campaign have been open about all calls made during the campaign.”
The Elections Canada investigation into the Guelph robocalls has focused on the campaign of Conservative Party candidate Marty Burke, who earlier this week denied any knowledge of who placed the calls.
According to Mathews’ statement, RackNine owner Matt Meier said he was under a contract with the Conservative Party during the 2011 election that did not allow him to do business with other parties.
Meier said the “Pierre” who opened the account with his company two days before the election “referred to knowing someone in the Conservative Party” and had called on Meier’s unlisted extension, asking for him by name. The documents do not indicate the name of the Conservative.
“In Meier’s view, these facts meant that someone must have given Pierre his contact information,” Mathews wrote in the Information to Obtain a production order on Dec. 12.
Meier did not know his service was being used to send out the misleading calls and is co-operating with Elections Canada.
In an email to Meier, the customer had said he was a University of Ottawa correspondence student living in Joliette, Que., a town northwest of Montreal. He signed his emails “Pierre.”
Meier said the Pierre account, assigned customer number 93, gave a PayPal account registered to Pierre Jones of 54 Lajoie Nord in Joliette.
There’s a Royal Canadian Legion at 56 Lajoie Nord. A woman working there on Friday said there is no 54 Lajoie Nord. Next door to the Legion is a paint shop and a pizza parlour.
The production order issued by the court in December was used to compel eBay International and its subsidiary, PayPal Canada, to provide details of the PayPal account used to pay for Poutine’s RackNine robocalls.
The account was registered to someone using the email address pierres1630(at)gmail.com.
The order required PayPal to turn over account details, transaction history and the IP address used by pierre1630(at)gmail.com, whenever he or she connected to the payment company’s servers.
Documents filed in court in Ottawa Friday morning show that PayPal gave Mathews credit card information, activity logs and transactions logs corresponding with the account. The electronic records were turned over in three batches, the most recent only on March 7.
Mathews’ statement says the fake Elections Canada message went out to 7,676 numbers between 10:03 and 10:14 the morning of election day, including callbacks to unanswered numbers. The calls, at RackNine’s rate of 1.9 cents per call, cost $162.10.
An earlier media report, citing Conservative sources, said that Poutine sent only 5,053 calls in Guelph, and about 100 to other Ontario cities, perhaps as the result of a data list with bad entries. It is not clear what accounts for the inconsistency between the number of calls.
Poutine had uploaded a filed named “supporters” that had 6,738 phone numbers, including one for the disposable Virgin Mobile cellphone the suspect used.
Mathews said he had interviewed 18 people in Guelph in May who had reported the misleading Elections Canada calls. Phone numbers belonging to all but one of them show up the phone list Poutine uploaded.
Data provided to Mathews by Meier showed that customer 93 logged into RackNine 13 times on May 1 and May 2 ? election day ? including two unsuccessful attempts caused by entering the wrong password.
Meier told Mathews Pierre Jones claimed to be a University of Ottawa student, but Mathews checked with the university’s protective services and could find no record of a student with that name. He concluded the name and the address in Joliette also appeared to be false.
Annoying calls made to appear to originate with a political opponent are one of the techniques dubbed “ratf—ing” by political operatives in the U.S., who used them to discourage supporters of Democratic presidential nomination challenger Edmund Muskie before the Watergate scandal.
The documents do not describe the script used in the unsent call supporting Valeriote.
smaher@postmedia.com
gmcgregor@thecitizen.com
? Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Source: http://feeds.canada.com/~r/canwest/F75/~3/4i3KY9ikNKc/story.html
whitney houston funeral judi dench alicia keys bobby brown leaves funeral donnie mcclurkin whitney houston funeral live stream kevin costner whitney houston
Owning Absolute Acreage in assorted states is a dream for many, but a absoluteness that abounding accept already achieved. This agency you could accept a abode in one accompaniment and a vacation home in addition state. This is a acceptable affair for the few that can cull it off, but there can be after-effects bottomward the road. Owning acreage in assorted states can acutely affect your acreage plan.One key aspect of authoritative an acreage plan is fabricated to abate the accountability on those that will accept to backpack out your acreage in probate as an abettor or claimed representative. This accountability is greater back one owns acreage in assorted states. If one is a citizen in one accompaniment and has acreage any added accompaniment that ranges from a house, ranch, or to acreage as baby as aloof a timeshare, there may be a added difficult and big-ticket bearings for your admired ones bottomward the road. The acreage that is in your accompaniment of abode will be probated through the probate cloister in your accompaniment of residence. Probate courts abide to change appellation from the asleep name to the name of abeyant heirs. The probate cloister in your accompaniment of abode does not accept the ascendancy to probate acreage in added states. This agency that a probate proceeding charge be accomplished in anniversary accompaniment that one owns acreage in alike if it is aloof a timeshare in Florida that you absorb one anniversary in a year. This additionally agency your acreage charge pay added fees for probate and best acceptable attorneys in anniversary added state.A band-aid to probate in assorted states or what is alleged accessory probate can be a capricious active trust. A capricious active assurance takes the appellation of the acreage out of your name and puts appellation of the acreage into the name of active trust. Probate is alone all-important for assets blue-blooded in your name. Once appellation of acreage is removed from your name there is no charge for probate of that acreage in one accompaniment or assorted states. A capricious active assurance is not meant for everyone?s acreage plan, but it makes faculty for those with acreage in added states. Active trusts can be pushed on some that do not absolutely charge it as allotment of their acreage plan, but owning absolute acreage in added than one accompaniment is austere acumen to attending in to accepting one made. Contact an acreage planning advocate to see if a assurance is appropriate for your acreage situation.