After the arrests of the Laval police on Wednesday, the Sûreté du Québec handcuffed the number one suspect in the data theft case at Desjardins, Sébastien Boulanger-Dorval. Charges also target seven other people as part of the Portier project over the data leak that potentially affected 9.7 million customers. Two of them are considered “on the run.”
Boulanger-Dorval, 42, is accused in particular of having “fraudulently obtained computer services”, of having had in his possession “information about another person” with the intention of committing a crime, of having retransmitted this data, as well as fraud, between October 2016 and May 2019.
The SQ also caught Jean-Loup Leullier-Masse, 32, François Baillargeon-Bouchard, 35, and Laurence Bernier, 29. They are due to appear this afternoon to answer to the same charges, except the first.
Mathieu Joncas, 38, and Charles Bernier, 31, could not be located.
The police also issued arrest warrants for Juan Pablo Serrano, 38, and Maxime Paquette, 38. “On the run abroad, they are now among the most wanted criminals in Quebec,” the SQ said.
“They knew that one day we would be looking for them,” said Benoît Richard, spokesperson for the SQ, at a press conference. These people have no intention of returning to Quebec.
According to the arrest warrants for them, Paquette lives in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, while Pablo Serrano’s home is “unknown.” Both are charged with fraud over $5,000 and possessing confidential information about another for the purpose of committing a crime, from November 2017 to November 2020.
In a second mandate, Paquette is also accused of having had this information later, in June 2021.
According to what police documents filed in court have allowed us to learn so far, Sébastien Boulanger-Dorval would have sold stolen information on millions of customers to Jean-Loup Leullier-Masse, a private lender from Montmagny then in business with Charles Bernier. Their offices were also searched by the Laval police in June 2019, as was the residence of Leullier-Masse.
The latter then allegedly resold part of the information to Mathieu Joncas, a mortgage broker already sentenced in 2022 by the profession’s watchdog to fines totaling $36,000 and 420 days of suspension. The businessman, who is also a private lender, admitted to having acquired information on “150,000 to 200,000” Desjardins clients before the disciplinary committee of the Organisme d’autoréglementation du courtageimmobilier du Québec (OACIQ) .
His partner and insurance broker, François Baillargeon-Bouchard, was fined a total of $40,000 for buying data on 40,000 clients and obstructing an investigation by the Financial Markets Authority.
As for Juan Pablo Serrano, a repeat fraudster, the SQ suspects him of having carried out fraud using information stolen from Desjardins, according to police documents filed in court to obtain search warrants in recent years.
In September 2019, police seized a computer from his home containing no less than 3.85 million lines of data on Desjardins customers. According to investigators’ statements, his roommate Maxime Paquette collaborated with him to use them for criminal purposes.
On Wednesday, the Laval police announced the arrest of three people in connection with fraud carried out by AccèsD using information from data theft, as part of its Glaive project at the origin of the main investigation of the SQ, which for its part deals with the data theft itself. A fourth person was still being sought at the time of the press conference.
These are the first major developments after the announcement of a massive data theft at Desjardins on June 20, 2019.
The Movement initially announced that it had data on 2.9 million customers stolen. He then revised this figure upwards several times. In December 2020, privacy commissions concluded that the theft potentially affected 9.7 million individuals and businesses.