The agency in charge of Canada’s nuclear waste says an alleged cyber criminal posing as an Indigenous chief managed to cheat the organization into paying the person almost $300,000, money meant for community development at a First Nation in Ontario.
The funds were the second of two payments totalling $600,000 from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation, part of a controversial community development effort tied to finding a host site for a $23-billion tomb to seal Canada’s stockpile of used nuclear fuel for millennia.
“Earlier this year, we were made aware that we were the victim of fraudulent cyber activity when a payment was diverted from the intended recipient,” NWMO media relations manager Bruce Logan told CBC News in an email.
“Thankfully we were able to recover most of the funds. We have also transferred the full amount to Chippewas of Saugeen, the rightful recipient.”
Court filings answer questions agency won’t
Logan said the NWMO has opened an internal investigation. It had also reported the crime to the RCMP’s Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, but the Mounties aren’t investigating, he said.
Logan wouldn’t answer any further questions.
Saugeen First Nation, an Ojibway First Nation along the Saugeen River and Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, eventually was the ‘rightful recipient’ of the money, slated to be used for community development. (Google Street View)
However, court documents filed by lawyers for the NWMO in its attempts to find the missing money were obtained and reviewed by CBC News. They provide some insight into how the alleged scammer got away with some of the money.
According to affidavits, the agency received two emails on Dec. 21, 2021, from an email account professing to be that of Saugeen First Nation Chief Lester Anoquot.
The first email contained instructions to make the payments to an account with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) instead of the band’s usual Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) account. The second email held a copy of a void RBC cheque.
Fraudster claimed to be Saugeen chief
A series of emails were then exchanged between the person claiming to be the chief and agency officials as they tried to sniff out the legitimacy of the sudden change in payment instructions, the court documents said.
This bright yellow sign was erected by protesters in Teeswater, Ont., a small farming town in South Bruce municipality, one of two sites where the NWMO is considering storing Canada’s stockpile of used nuclear fuel. (Colin Butler/CBC News)
On Dec. 29, 2021, the NWMO made an electronic payment to the specified account in good faith. The court documents said it wasn’t until Jan. 27, 2022, when the band council said the money never arrived, that NWMO officials realized the account claiming to be that of the chief had been compromised.
The documents said at that point, NWMO officials realized they knew neither the identity of the person who received the money nor how much was spent.
According to the documents, lawyers for the nuclear waste agency then applied for a Norwich order, a rare move in Canadian law that would compel an innocent third party to turn over information to aid a prosecution.
A Toronto court placed a restraint order on the account on March 9, 2022, court filings said. At the time, there was a remaining balance of $228,465.07.
Anoquot declined to comment to CBC News on the matter, saying the band council is still trying to determine its next steps.
“We are still discussing a path forward [and] are not prepared to do a story yet,” he wrote in an email.
Bank records included in court filings
But RBC records included in the court filings indicate the account in question belonged to a Robert Soloman Gruger, who runs a company called RSG Ventures, registered at a residential address in Burlington, Ont.
Diagram shows what the $23-billion tomb for nuclear waste would look like once construction is complete. The facility is designed to store over three million bundles of spent nuclear fuel for 100,000 years. (NWMO)
The home is a former duplex and is currently listed for sale on the province’s Multiple Listing Services website. Google Streetview images show the property undergoing extensive renovations. No one is currently living at the residence.
The bank records state the physical address of RSG Ventures is a commercial plaza in Oakville, Ont. The mailing address is a mall in Mississauga, Ont.
The bank records also listed a phone number for the company, but when CBC News called the number, Douglas Finch answered and said he had never heard of RSG Ventures or Robert Solomon Gruger.
Finch said he had recently acquired the phone number as an executive line for his company, DraftCo, a draught beer monitoring service for bars and restaurants in the Greater Toronto Area.
“That’s a business number I just picked up,” he said. “I’ve only had the number for six weeks type thing.”
As for Robert Solomon Gruger, CBC News ran his name through a number of databases — including bankruptcy, insolvency, and a lien search in Ontario — but no matches showed up.
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31. The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
