The smartest guy in the room: Cameron Ortis and the RCMP secrets scandal - The Fifth Estate

i'm bob mcewen in ottawa where one of canada's most notorious spy cases is now unfolding it's a remarkable story that combines the dark web a mexican drug cartel australian biker gangs and a cast of characters that could come straight from hollywood but as we're about to show you in fact the plot has been ripped from the files of the rcmp and the fbi this is the fifth estate they were two canadians with brilliant high-tech minds there was no person on earth who had the better talent base than cameron to to lead that kind of work cameron ortiz was one of the highest ranking civilians in the rcmp and the mountie's most senior intelligence official in ottawa what cameron was seeing all the way through that period was some of the darker sides of the internet how it was used by organized crime canadian businessman vincent ramos supplied communications to the criminal underworld what he was doing based in the vancouver area was selling these gutted blackberry cell phones which turned out to be heavily encrypted messaging devices and he was selling them to criminals all over the world really once on opposite sides of the law today cameron ortiz and vincent ramos both face years behind bars this is october 2019 the last time or disappeared in public charged with obtaining and distributing canada's official secrets for sale he's now in custody awaiting trial if convicted he could spend the next four decades in prison but as you'll see if not for a most unlikely chain of events cameron ortiz and vincent ramos might never have been apprehended in the first place 2011 and 39 year old cameron ortiz was on the fast track at rcmp headquarters in ottawa one of commissioner bob paulson's so-called golden boys praised for his intellect and his insight into the criminal potential of the internet and my initial impression of cam was that he was you know a tremendously gifted and intelligent person i mean he was just that kind of person you could you could tell it kind of almost radiated off him except perhaps for this high school haircut from his late teens to his late 40s he was on the road to success from a mennonite family in bc always the smartest in the room [Music] he got his masters back east and his phd at ubc ortiz's doctoral thesis examined a soon-to-be explosive topic cyber security and the dark web [Music] he traveled widely and learned to speak mandarin then joined the rcmp in 2007 his palace called him clark kent and james bond he kind of lived in his own world in some ways and it was a world that we only dimly could see as his professors but that we knew was the world of information technologies the internet dark sides of the internet that was his inner life and that was especially important to the rcmp as the mounties began to confront new online threats to law enforcement which orders had already been studied for over a decade it makes him 15 years ahead of his time where there's so many efforts to try to be warnings the risks the the dark side is something now we sort of understand cameron was there 15 years before the rest of us i think i can safely say that there are there is criminal activity going on every day that's facilitated by technology that we aren't acting on so brick walls in 2016 rcmp commissioner bob paulson told the cbc that what kept him awake at night was the knowledge that encrypted online communications could not be monitored and understood by police giving criminals virtual free reign on the internet i don't have a solution for that frankly it's very troubling the the criminal element and by that i include and in that i include the the terrorist element are relying on encryption you know the whole idea of cyber crime and entire criminal enterprises that existed um in this nether world was was very very new to us and we realized that we were in a position where we really we really had to get smart about it very very quickly it's why the mounties established the national intelligence coordination center known as the nick here at rcmp headquarters outside ottawa in 2016 a new director general was appointed for the first time a civilian none other than cameron orders i wasn't completely surprised because i did feel that that he was being groomed for that and that was certainly in the cards securing businesses across the globe for over a decade and recognized by government agencies and cyber experts as uncrackable among the complex investigations the nick would be tasked with was a shadowy vancouver cell phone company called phantom secure it sells encrypted phones that are so secure even australia's electronic spy agency can't crack their code increasingly in their investigations of biker gangs and drug networks both the rcmp and the federal police in australia were seizing fandom secure phones what those phantom secure cell phones were were blackberry smartphones which had had many of their inner workings removed gps internet camera and voice recorder replaced with encryption software which would allow the scrambling of messages then sent to overseas servers in places like panama and hong kong and another layer of security should one of the phones be seized by law enforcement they could wipe it clean remotely depending on your point of view erasing the memory or destroying the evidence as far as we were concerned it was something that we really wanted to get involved with take those handsets out of the hands of the criminal elements to ensure that law enforcement was back on a level playing field i'm vince ramos i'm from vancouver bc i have a background in the telecom mobile phone industry like cameron ortis phantom secure ceo vincent ramos was smart and ambitious he said he had founded his company to provide secure encrypted communications for business executives phantom secure vince is not your gangster kind of guy i mean if you meet this guy you would think you know you should have a son like him because he's a very gentle just a great guy the son of filipino immigrants to winnipeg ramos became fascinated by direct marketing and the get rich quick commercials he saw on canadian tv look at these slices every single one comes out as pretty as a picture he always says you know i'm going to come to you one day you know when i make lots of money we're going to invest this you know i'm always telling him to invest his money in 2008 after a stint in mobile phone sales ramos went into business on his own i think he he probably started out his business maybe with better intentions but i think it became clear pretty quickly that the people who were drawn to his product were criminal organizations there were drug cartels and not just any cartels but the biggest most powerful vincent ramos sold his encrypted blackberries to the mexican sinaloa group founded by the notorious joaquin el chapo guzman after doing that deal ramos sent this victory text back to his headquarters in vancouver we are effin rich man i swear to god you better effing appreciate it get the effing range rover brand new because i just closed a lot of business this week man sinaloa cartel that's what's up it was estimated that at the peak there were as many as 20 000 phantom secure phones in use generating tens of millions of dollars for vincent ramos and the usernames of phantom secure clients suggested which side of the law they were on yeah the user names were definitely people who were seemed drawn to the criminal lifestyle it was kneecapper killa el chapo when we come back the wild story of the undercover operation that led the fbi to canadian cell phone mastermind vincent ramos you had canadian guys working undercover with fbi guys posing basically as cartel leaders trying to get their hands on on more of these phones and recording ramos talking about exactly what these funds could do for their criminal business and incredibly how the rcmp discovered who allegedly was leaking canada's official secrets tonight national secrets at risk a senior rcmp official under arrest if you have a story you think needs to be told send us your tips at fifth tips at cbc.ca and for a more confidential way to contact us visit our website at cbc.ca fifth and click on secure drop here west side the incredible story of how a canadian company selling encrypted cell phones to international criminals would lead to an espionage arrest at the highest levels of the rcmp got its start here in southern california home to the man who calls himself robin hood 702 is a modern-day robin hood who gives to the poor and receives one dis rescues one deserving family drowning in debt 702 is the area code for las vegas robin hood is r.j cipriani a high-stakes gambler with a reputation for helping the needy with his winnings at the blackjack tables in 2011 he got an invitation he couldn't refuse a wealthy businessman offered to help raise money for robin hood's good works by giving him a million and a half dollars to gamble with we're here and i let him know that gambling is not a guaranteed science that the risk is very high that i'm not going to win and he didn't care no no i heard about you i know you're good it's okay it doesn't matter that businessman was owen hanson a former university of southern california football player on the surface he appeared to be very successful involved in real estate and online gambling both in the us and australia i figured he had to be a billionaire or a billionaire son for him to just hand me you know a million and a half dollars the plan was that hansen would back cipriani financially at the star casino in sydney whatever rj won he could give to his charity the rest he had to give back to hanson and that first time did it work out for both of them i had won a little bit of money i don't know 150 i forget the actual number but he wouldn't meet with me and it was i'm like dude i got your money so i thought that was a little weird that he couldn't make time to meet with me to give him his million and a half dollars back uh so then at one point he says listen just just i'll get i'll get the money back in the states when i want it i go to the states a lot i'll see you there eventually it all worked out and afterwards rj cipriani got another invitation from hanson to go back to australia this time with an even bigger bankroll these are 250 000 chips when i checked into my suite um i got a knock on the door and it was owen hanson and he had two suitcases giant suitcases full of money and i said how much is there and there was two and a half million dollars now i didn't count it right there because it was literally into full suitcases so he then started to act a little differently differently in what way really pushy said look you're going to do this and at some point even said look we know where you live we know where your wife is we know what she's wearing today and he made me think that okay this is really not what i want to do and at some point i said to him you know i don't think i want to do this and he said no i think you're going to do it the way he tells it after those threats cipriani grew worried the source of all that money might not be legitimate that he was really being asked to launder owen hanson's illicit cash but he sat down at the blackjack table in sydney anyway and began to bet he now sees what happened next is divine intervention god had directed me through my whole life and apparently god realized that if i did this a second time there's no way out and i would have been in big trouble so i didn't win i blew the whole two and a half million despite the fact that you believed something was wrong despite the fact that he threatened you were you not concerned what might happen if i lost his money no i wasn't panicked until i literally blew the full two and a half million that's when i went oh [ __ ] what am i going to do hanson ordered cipriani to meet him at a sydney hotel to sort things out but r.j had no intention of showing up instead he called hotel security to create a diversion there's a security yes there's a man with a gun in room i even forget their room number such and such and they said what do you mean i said there's a man with a gun in a room i don't know if there's somebody in there he's holding hostage but there's a man with a gun in the room i hang up the phone i figure okay i'm safe nobody's watching me let's get out when australian police reach the hotel room they found a suitcase with seven hundred and two thousand dollars but no gun and no cipriani he was already on the next flight back to the u.s i can't imagine hansing being happy losing 2.5 million dollars within a few hours you know that that's a lot of money obviously i think it dawned on hansen probably pretty quickly too that that cipriani wasn't going to cooperate pretty soon death threats started showing up at cipriani's door why did owen hansen call you how did he get he he calls me out of the blue i'd never heard of him before he says i understand you do locates and background checks in los angeles daniel hanks insists he's not an enforcer just a private investigator but he does admit responsibility for what happened at the cipriani family burial plot outside philadelphia owen hanson paid hanks to go there splash red paint on the cipriani headstone then take a picture i get back to california and he says can you do photoshop and i go uh yeah but not real well i'm not you know master of photoshop he says well can you put me in the picture next to the tombstone i said yeah if we got a similar background we can do that we get there and it gets real creepy he goes to the trunk of his car he pulls out a shovel and a mexican wrestler mask and he puts it on and i'm going oh yeah and then owen hanson had one final thing he wanted daniel hanks to do he says can you put cipriani's name on the tombstone with his date of birth and then the date of death just put the words soon the biggest mistake he made was desecrating my mother and father's grave especially my mom the person that i love more than anything and you're going to have the balls to go there and desecrate my mother and father's grave no [ __ ] way i'm coming for you r.j cipriani says that's when he went to the fbi in southern california to tell his story about hanson's threats it would be the domino that set in motion a chain of events which ultimately would lead to ottawa to the rcmp and one of canada's top intelligence officials [Music] september 2015 as he was about to tee off at a golf course outside san diego police arrested owen hanson owen hanson is one of five suspects arrested for international drug trafficking and money laundering meanwhile police in australia executed raids on hanson associates down under i will allege that the the criminal network involved has been importing cocaine to australia that approximately five million or so dollars has been laundered as a result of that importation owen hanson was charged with smuggling hundreds of kilos of cocaine in canada australia and the us but more crucially police discovered the six encrypted phantom secure cell phones he'd used to do it that's when the fbi joined the international manhunt for phantom secure ceo canadian vincent ramos it was just the beginning law enforcement has been aware of vincent ramos and phantom secure for actually a really long time canada knew about vincent ramos and and and these phones and and this this company that was supplying these phones to criminal organization and they had an undercover operation even at one point getting one of these phones but for whatever reason um just the prosecution wasn't able to happen they couldn't nail it down um so when the owen hanson case broke and the fbi got their own phone they all came together and they said okay i know you guys have been working this guy let's let's all work together when we come back the investigation leads to a most unexpected place in person cam was certainly not the most humble person uh certainly always believed himself to be the smartest guy in the room but the thought that he might be a traitor or a spy had really never crossed my mind 2015 a police undercover team is closing in on the epicenter of underworld communications vancouver so he picked up the load and i think he's been arrested and there's a lot of evidence and [ __ ] on my blackberry yeah and i need that evidence gone asap the royal canadian mounted police are running the operation you want to wipe both of them yes okay then uh your lifesaver their prime target phantom secure the secret of vancouver-based company selling encrypted cell phones to some of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the world one sec and but the thing is the cops can't access it right they can't even access that anyway yeah the mounties are working the case along with the fbi in the u.s and the federal police in australia we know that the handsets were being used by people from outlaw motorcycle gangs that obviously are involved in you know very violent crime and including um you know potentially murder squarely in their sights phantom secure ceo canadian vincent ramos then this happened it came out of the blue an email to cell phone ceo vincent ramos in vancouver offering official secrets including information from an active rcmp investigation into none other than vincent ramos himself the rcmp investigation was based in british columbia but supported from ottawa by the mounties national intelligence coordination center the nick by 2016 commanded by cameron ortis a consummate intelligence analyst with a deep understanding of the criminal potential of the internet the whole issue of cyber crime and organized crime and terrorist use of encrypted communications was certainly one of the issues that that led to the creation of the neck and the head of the nick cameron ortiz seemed to have the confidence of rcmp brass including then commissioner bob paulson who in 2016 was also deeply worried about the dangers of encryption and the dark web i think there's evidence that there are people on the dark web that are having criminally relevant communications that we don't have access to paulson says he first realized the fearsome potential some years before when the mafia in montreal began experimenting with encryption we saw them communicate openly confidently freely and that moment showed me the impact that the the confidence of their sort of isolation from society gave them in their criminality right they're talking about killing people openly like killing people murdering people but though cameron order seemed the right man in the right job at the right time some of his rcmp colleagues began to notice some troubling behavior one of the difficulties that i and some of my colleagues had with cameron is that is that we didn't see a whole lot of humility well i think intellectual and intellectual humility is is is very very important not only for anybody who works in in the intelligence world but particularly for a civilian in a paramilitary organization like the rcmp this past august three rcmp analysts filed a lawsuit alleging harassment and abusive authority by cameron ortiz not tested in court the suit alleges workplace culture rapidly deteriorated after orders appointment as director general the analysts charge orders with degrading disrespectful and abusive behavior adding that an attempt to raise concerns met with inaction and in some cases ridicule from members of rcmp's senior management but i know that that people wanted out of neck they wanted out of neck and they were they they were prepared to do almost anything to get out of neck but despite the red flags cameron ortiz seemed untouchable too valuable to lose for our cmp brass after years of investigation on march 7 2018 the fbi arrested cell phone mastermind vincent ramos in bellingham washington the first case of its kind to be prosecuted in the u.s ramos was forced to forfeit about 80 million dollars and sent to prison i guess money probably sometimes blinds people you can either make money slow or you make money fast and when you're making money fast you know sometimes things happen soon after police were mining the contents of a seized phantom secure computer when they made a shocking discovery it was that email to ramos about the mountie's investigation into his own company they would soon learn that it came from someone with access to the highest levels of rcmp security [Music] it was actually an rcmp officer who was there and came across some pretty troubling communications i think they did not know what they had at first i think it was all very vague but it seemed to indicate that someone wanted to sell some kind of information the rcmp immediately started an internal investigation which continued for the next 18 months until this mr ortiz has been charged for alleged criminal activity under the criminal code and the security of information act the news of his arrest has shaken many people throughout the rcmp particularly in federal policing as well as the broader domestic and international security and intelligence communities who worked with mr ortiz in 2018 the rcmp was supporting an fbi investigation and through the course of this file the rcmp uncovered possible internal corruption authorities were stunned at what they found when they searched ortis home earlier this year dozens of computers many of them encrypted at orders ottawa apartment investigators found encrypted devices with evidence he'd allegedly been gathering classified material that he intended to leak to foreign entities either criminal or terrorist i think a lot of canadians a big question on their mind is why there's been some reporting that suggests that he had a debt problem can you talk at all a bit a bit about motive in this case at this point in investigation i can't comment on the motive whatever fueled his interest in the dark net understanding the possible motive of an intelligence official like cameron ortiz can be crucial for a security agency like the rcmp in terms of protecting ourselves from espionage by insiders a key protection is to screen them out before they even become employees dr ursula wilder is chief clinical psychologist for the u.s central intelligence agency the cia her specialty is who spies and leaks and why we also need to understand why those within our intelligence community would be willing or manipulated into providing illicitly classified information to an unauthorized third party foreign intelligence service or let's say a media media platform dr wilder has identified three main factors necessary for an insider to spy or leak one their personality two a crisis or trigger of some sort and three there must be an opportunity to spy how much would it exacerbate the role of the opportunity here if the person we're talking about had risen to a level where he was no longer subject to the scrutiny that other lower level agents might be in my organization the more accesses you get the more knowledge you have the more deep your responsibilities are the more scrutiny you you undergo but was cameron orta scrutinized more closely after his meteoric rise through the rcmp ranks i can't comment on cameron's you know security or the status of cameron's security clearance simply because i don't know i think there's a tendency in the rcmp to when someone comes into the organization or someone presents themselves to the organization as a person who is very extremely competent hyper competent has a new way of doing things there is a tendency to kind of perhaps sit back a little bit and and and kind of allow them to to do their thing and certainly that is a pattern in the rcmp orders this is what rcmp commissioner brenda lucky said uh any individual in our organization with top secret clearance gets recertified every five years and mr ortiz was uh at a valid security clearance so it appears that though the polygraph is an international standard for security clearance as it is with the cia and its canadian counterpart ceases admittedly the rcmp never used a lie detector to scrutinize its top intelligence official cameron ortis as far as i know there is no senior member of the rcmp unless they've happened to be seconded to csis there is no senior member of the rcmp who has ever been subjected to a to a polygraph simply because the polygraph is from the rc the perspective of the rcmp a relatively new innovation the cia's dr ursula wilder sees that approach as counterintuitive and counterproductive i can only assume but this is hypothetical for me that if somebody goes up in the ranks and gets less scrutinized that person would know that and if that person is vulnerable personality wise to considering espionage then that would be a time where they might might see themselves as more safely able to seek a customer and engage in espionage so were there signs that cameron ortiz the rcmp's top intelligence official may have been vulnerable to spy or leak i wasn't aware of him ever being a gambler or risk taker he didn't live a flashy or extravagant life he seemed to be working 20 hours a day on his files didn't travel much did not have was not a nightclub kind of guy i don't think he had much time for any kind of social and private life so never did we see any signs either as a student uh or in my occasional visits with him later of any financial distress [Music] but consider the lifestyle that friends and colleagues describe when cameron ortiz first joined the rcmp in ottawa he rented a basement apartment and took the bus to work after selling his car to pay down debt promoted a few years later now with a low six-figure salary he moved into a high-end building in ottawa's byward market friends say he enjoyed restaurant meals and nice clothes he also was still paying off student loans from years past in all it's been reported orders may have had debts of about ninety thousand dollars well we do know he had student debt and uh i think it was going to take him a little while to pay some of that out but it how he would have run up those kinds of debts strikes me as a real puzzle so what would push a top intelligence official considered the best and brightest who apparently had the backing of his bosses to use that position to allegedly gather and leak classified information dr wilder can't speak specifically about cameron ortiz but she has seen cases of top intelligence agents going bad unfortunately the story is the icarus story it's not it's not a new one there will always be very talented ego driven people who rise quickly to the top who are charming or talented who ascend faster than perhaps is good for them and when they get to the top they do not either understand that rules still apply to them or they never learned that and they will continue to believe themselves to be better the best entitled and there's one more thing the rcmp's intelligence chief definitively had access to the operations of canada's partners in the five eyes security alliance the u.s britain australia and new zealand potentially putting their secrets even lives at risk so that a spy in the canadian security service is a danger to the cia to australia to new zealand and it's a danger to canada canada and to all the colleagues of that spy in canada former rcmp commissioner bob paulson has acknowledged a friendly relationship with cameron ortiz but denied any inkling about criminal acts he declined our invitation to speak on camera cell phone ceo vincent ramos might have ideas about what could have motivated ortiz to email him but he's serving nine years in a u.s federal prison after pleading guilty to racketeering he too refused our interview request the case against cameron ortiz may not go to trial until later next year even beyond and because key evidence is likely to fall into the category of classified information or official secrets it may not be made public even in court so that means it may take a while before we get the answer to the crucial question in the orders case why angus smith spent three decades with the rcmp now retired in nova scotia still an intelligence analyst at heart he believes the issue is not only what cameron ortiz may have done in the past but how the rcmp will deal with it now and in the future it is embarrassing but we do recover and i but i would say that the real problem is that it essentially negates years and years and years of investigative work very very careful investigative work very expensive and painstaking investigative work and it is absolutely from the perspective of an intelligence officer from the ins perspective of an intelligence analyst an investigator it is absolutely soul crushing because it means that what you've done for the past you know perhaps five ten years of your life has absolutely no meaning whatsoever all because of one person rcmp intelligence chief cameron ortis grew up in abbotsford bc the mennonite pastor's son who had such promise and appeared destined to a life of public service but in this courtroom sketch cameron order seems a long way from the best and brightest as he was known in the rcmp this story has fascinated me from the very beginning ortiz fall from grace was triggered by a unique cast of characters beginning with u.s narcotics and gambling kingpin owen hansen he grew up here in redondo beach california the football player turned crimebot for whom friday night lights are now long gone owen hanson was sentenced to about 20 years in prison and in the federal system you have to serve at least 85 percent of that term in march this year hanson reportedly testified in an australian trial related to the 702 thousand dollars in cash found by police in that sydney hotel room after high stakes gambler r.j cipriani aka robin hood 702 made his getaway i met with the fbi and they actually said it was 702 000. wait a minute 700 and two thousand are you sure it's seven hundred and two thousand they go why i said that's my moniker robinhood 702. owen hanson is so calculated he probably did it on purpose so they would think that it was my money for all his trouble in helping take down owen hansen cipriani says he was banned from casinos because everyone thought he was in on hanson's international drug trafficking and money laundering rank so here we are there's been millions and millions forfeited most recently vincent ramos forfeited and i got kind of upset that i wasn't they know for seven and a half years i wasn't able to go to a casino and my life has been damaged significantly and my lifestyle and they didn't even think to say hey let's give this guy a reward and private investigator daniel hanks feels like owen hanson's victim too i'm in bed at six o'clock in the morning and i could hear a bull horn fbi you know they're out on the street and they're they're down on the street and i'm up on the second floor and there's banging on the door and there's a swat team outside i mean literally with long rifles and all tactical gear you know when they pull me out on the on the the balcony with the neighbors now looking you know woke up looking outside and and they say fbi we have a search warrant the charge against hanks was interstate travel to make a threat to collect the debt in other words trying to get cipriani to repay hansen's two and a half million dollars by defacing his family gravesite i kept trying to explain to him i didn't do that you know well you're facing 20 years but in the end daniel hanks pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 16 months in prison [Applause] that guy the usa is like i want this guy bad so the more the married it all took police to cell phone ceo vincent ramos he boasted of selling uncrackable communications but he was tracked down and arrested when the fbi followed the signal from his own cell phone strange you know i mean when i heard the story i just couldn't believe it myself it was like you know like i said every other word of my mouth was really you know i mean it just seems crazy that something that took 30 seconds in a pennsylvania graveyard led to the downfall of organized crime members all over the world and the final domino would lead to canadian intelligence official cameron orders he is awaiting trial for espionage the international crime caper with everything now a spy story too the one thing that we don't have that we didn't already have is spies right now we do [Music] you

Channel: The Fifth Estate

Views: 468,138

Rating: 4.736311 out of 5

Keywords: Cameron Ortis, RCMP, Intelligence official, intelligence, Phantom Secure Communications, Phantom Secure, FBI, investigation, National Intelligence Co-ordination Centre, RCMP's National Intelligence Co-ordination Centre, NICC, Canada, Ottawa, The Fifth Estate, CBC, CBC News, Vincent Ramos, Security of Information Act, spy, spying, crime, police, Vancouver, Australian police

Id: 2ni9c23aHDA

Length: 41min 42sec (2502 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020