Front Burner - What an alleged 'prolific' fraudster reveals about identity theft in Canada

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

Today on Front Burner, the story of an alleged “professional” identity thief who is facing over 50 fraud-related charges, and accused of stealing the identities of some 20 women by creating forged identification documents and racking up big bills. In this episode, guest host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with CBC senior reporter John Lancaster about how prevalent identity theft is, and how devastating it can be for Canadians.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm El-Amin Abdelmahmoud sitting in for Jamie Poisson. Today I want to talk about someone that police have called a prolific and even professional identity thief. She's accused of racking up big bills, including the purchase of cars and leasing homes and other people's names. Investigators admit they don't know the full extent of her alleged crimes.

Deborah Aguntayumbo is facing more than 50 fraud-related charges in numerous jurisdictions in Ontario and Quebec, allegedly related to stealing the identities of some 20 women. Police in Longueuil allege Aguntayumbo drove to Quebec and using the stolen identity of an Ontario woman bought a used Mercedes-Benz. Today, CBC senior reporter John Lancaster joins me to explain why Deborah Ogun-Tuyumbo is back in the news and how all of this points to a much wider problem around identity theft in Canada. This is Frontburner. So John, what do we actually know about Deborah Aguntayimbo?

Elamin, this is someone, as you said in the intro there, that police have described. She definitely would be considered a professional fraudster, knows what she's doing, and quite prolific. She's a very complicated person because we did all sorts of public checks. We looked into any liens or assets that may be in her name and there was nothing. If you look under her name, she had almost no online presence. The only online presence of her we could find were about four or five shots of her that someone posted on a website called starnow.ca, which is used by actors and musicians looking for part-time gigs. But apart from that, it appears that she was living a fairly good lifestyle. We know she had rented some very nice condos in the Toronto area,

not under her name, allegedly. And if you look at the sheer volume of charges and the dates those charges relate to, there seems to be a consistent pattern here of police allege ongoing frauds and identity thefts. Rather a mysterious figure. But then there are the crimes. Can you tell me a little bit about the crimes that she's being accused of? Yeah, absolutely. One of the most recent sets of charges laid last summer involved a Mississauga woman, Natalia Bozic. It's a crazy thought knowing that a place of security can give information out so easily with a fake ID.

She's 24, self-employed, and last summer she started noticing she couldn't get into her online RBC account. She went into the bank, was told, yeah, it's been hacked. They investigated it, and they put my account on freeze. Like nobody can use it. Nobody can put money in. Nobody could take money out. Not to worry, nothing's going to happen to your account. But two days later, police allege Ogun Tiyimbo walked into an RBC branch in Toronto

and provided a teller there with a driver's license in Natalia Bozic's name, but with Ogunciambo's picture on it. And the bank, convinced that Ogunciambo may have been Bozic, allegedly handed over Ogunciambo a debit card accessing Bozic's account. Bozic says the bank also revealed her social insurance number. The bank takes issue with that, although they have conceded that they didn't handle her private information as well as they could have. Wow. And that's important because in the coming days, these frauds seemingly exploded.

Credit cards taken out in her name, numerous car loans were attempted. And in one point, a few weeks later, she said she went to the mailbox, opened her mail. I got a congratulations letter in the mail saying that I bought a Range Rover. And of course she hadn't. Oh my God. So this thing got very out of control and very fast in her case. I was just thinking, what's next? Someone also went to Fido and also claimed to be Natalia Bozic and was able to switch her phone numbers, take control of her phone, order new phones, essentially rack up about $2,000 in phones and services. And of course, when her phone was hacked like that, Natalia says she lost control of all her social media accounts, Instagram, Twitter, personal emails, text messages, all were no longer in her control. They were in the control of someone else. Police allege that was Ogun Tiyambo.

Now, when it comes to Natalia's case, do we know anything about how Deborah allegedly obtained her personal information? That's the big question. She doesn't know. And for most of the identity theft victims we talk to, that's the million-dollar question. You know, why me and how me? And they don't seem to know. Natalia suggests her RBC online account was hacked first and it escalated from there. But a lot of them say they still have no idea. They've never lost identification, passports or anything like that.

They just don't know. I should say that Natalia's allegations have not yet been proven in court, right? Absolutely correct. If we can just get back to Agunta Yimbo for a minute, can you tell us a little bit about why police describe her as a professional? That's quite a designation. What sets her apart? Deborah Ogunteyimbo is relatively young. She's 26. And already she has a collection of about a dozen convictions. But it's the sheer number of new charges she's facing, 50 charges, all of them relating to fraud and identity theft.

50 charges, all of them relating to fraud and identity theft. And not just, you know, in Toronto, it's Peel region west of the city, Halton even further west of the city, York region north of the city, and even in Quebec. So it's not, these crimes aren't isolated to one or two individuals or one city. Police allege there's a much wider pattern here. Now, you mentioned her luxury condo earlier. York Regional Police had a search warrant for the place. When they went in there, what did they find?

They tell me that when they executed that search warrant, they found printer, cardstock, they allege was used to create some of these false identification documents. They say they've also, upon arresting her, found her with passports and other people's names, other people's social insurance cards, driver's licenses and multiple people's names, all sorts of identification documents belonging to other people. Do we know how many identities she had?

Police allege about 20 women she's stolen the identities of. And in most cases, according to the documents and our own research, trying to look at these people named in court documents as victims, many appear to be women around the same age as her in their early 20s. So 20 women, allegedly, that's quite a history. Has she been convicted of anything in the past? That's quite a history. Has she been convicted of anything in the past? Yeah, she's been convicted of numerous charges of fraud and dishonesty. But the identity theft charges themselves, like impersonation, that seems to be more recent. I'm curious about where you come into the story.

So how did you start investigating Deborah? It was almost by fluke. Natalia Bozic, she reached out to us, and she was more upset with her bank. They don't want to take any blame for this. Nothing. It's unacceptable, it's unprofessional, and they don't even show any remorse. They just take the blame on me, and they don't want anything to do with it. They don't want to admit to their wrongdoings. She didn't really know anything about Deborah Ogunsie-Imbow, and I certainly didn't.

But as part of that story, we started looking into her and reaching out to various police agencies. And many of them were all, you know, most of them were very happy to comply with our request for information. We went to the corresponding courthouses and we saw this, what police again described, a very unusual situation where one person had allegedly stolen so many identities

and racked up so many bills in their name. Again, like cars, renting condos, credit cards, car loans, bank loans, you know, a whole wide variety of alleged frauds. And it's not just people in the greater Toronto area, right? Like this week, you reported on a family in northern Ontario that might have been affected. They banked with Desjardins. That bank, of course, was involved in that big data breach recently. 4.2 million members affected. This kind of breach is different because this is a rogue employee we're talking about. The sheer scope of the breach led to an emergency parliamentary hearing where even some MPs were affected. What happened to that family? All five of them got a letter from Desjardins last June

saying their personal information had been stolen. Desjardins believes that information was stolen by a former employee and likely sold to unknown individuals. This, around the same time they were notified by Desjardins their personal information had been stolen, a 26-year-old woman in the family, her identity was stolen. And a couple months later, it took her to realize that when collection agencies started hounding her, looking for unpaid bills and unpaid auto insurance policy, she reached out to the various credit agencies. And that's when

her nightmare began unfolding. She'd realized someone had purchased a car in her name, credit cards, all sorts of things on credit. And they had no idea who or why did this. They said that would keep them up at night. Through their diligence, they began contacting all sorts of finance companies where the daughter's name had been used in an auto insurance policy. And they were able to find out taxing all sorts of finance companies where the daughter's name had been used,

and an auto insurance policy. And they were able to find out that whoever did this to their daughter provided an address, a 22nd floor condo at a Toronto condominium where that happened to be the same condominium that police raided in June while they were investigating Ogun Tiyimbo. So that's a connection. That was a possible clue and police are now investigating that. But what's interesting in that is part of our investigation, I mean, we discovered that Ogun Tiyimbo had moved into that 22nd floor unit at that Toronto condo tower several months earlier, but she allegedly didn't use her own name. She used the name of yet another person whose identity was stolen, according to police.

Wow. So the auto insurance policy that was registered to that address was in their daughter's name, Northern Ontario's daughter's name. Had police gone looking there, anyone had gone looking there, they wouldn't have found Deborah Ogunciambo. They would have found the lease under someone else's name completely. What an extensive web. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization,

empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. So you've talked to a lot of victims that have gone through this kind of thing. When we talk about someone like Natalia, she's only in her 20s. What is the long-term impact that that has on someone? Well, she says it's life-altering. They have my SIN number for life. They have my driver's license for life. They have all that stuff to keep it going.

And it can happen to me again next month. It can happen to me next year. It can happen to me when I'm retired. It can happen at any point. And then there's more stress to come. One of the things I asked her about was, Ogun Tiembo, in her multiple convictions, has never received more than a 90-day jail sentence.

Often the courts rule these aren't crimes of violence and therefore shouldn't attract harsher penalties. But if you talk to Natalia Bozic, she'll say... But it is a crime of violence in a sort of way. It ruins your future, it ruins your life. Like, I can't do anything right now. It's because her credit score has been affected so badly, and she's still trying to clear that,

that she's essentially been flagged. And she says, essentially, I mean, she can't even prove she's herself anymore. To apply for a visa, I got denied everywhere I went because now everything's blocked. I can't get a mortgage, I can't do prove she's herself anymore. To apply for a visa, I got denied everywhere I went because now everything's blocked. I can't get a mortgage. I can't do anything with myself. At one point, she took away my email. She took away my social media accounts. I had nothing left of myself.

See, like, the thing about Natalia is that you got her to speak on the record about this. Was it hard to get other people to tell this kind of story? Yeah, very difficult. A lot of people we reached out to as part of our investigation wanted nothing to do with this. I think there's a sense of shame. Some people we talked to who did speak to us briefly said they worked in the financial services industry and this didn't look good on them, which isn't completely unfair. They didn't victimize themselves. They were victims of a serious offense. And what's interesting too,

is that a lot of the people named in court documents who were allegedly victimized have essentially turtled. They've changed their phone numbers. They've pulled down their Instagram, Twitter, Facebook accounts. Can't blame them. No, exactly. These are people who no longer want their public information out there for people to see. And I think that's a sign that, you know, how deeply this has affected them. And especially these days, you know, it's one thing to walk into a bank and for me to impersonate you. Ideally, there's a, you know, a front line there is going to maybe take a closer look at that. But so many of our credit applications

are done online now. And I could pretend to be anyone. As long as I have someone's SIN and potentially a driver's license number, the computer doesn't know if I'm male, female, young, or old. It doesn't differentiate. As police say, it's a cat and mouse game.

As technology improves, so do criminals' ability to bypass that. This is all, as you can imagine, quite startling to hear. So let's zoom out a little bit. Sure. This woman's been accused of stealing over 20 identities, facing around 50 fraud charges. How is it that something like this can end up happening? Well, we reached out to Desjardins and had some, I thought, some pretty tough questions for them. They didn't answer any of them. In fairness to them, they have offered credit monitoring protection for all their bank

account holders in the future. But Desjardins, in their reply, they pointed us to a report from Canada's Privacy Commissioner from October 31st, so just a few weeks ago. And it said, you know, ever since corporate data breach became mandatory for companies to report that, they saw a massive spike in 2018.

680 companies reported that their customers' personal information had been compromised. And according to the Privacy Commissioner, that affected 28 million Canadians, which if you think about that, that's staggering. That's most of the country. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's certainly almost every adult in the country, right? If you take away kids out of the equation. So, I mean, a lot of people would say we have a serious problem in this country tackling this issue protecting people's data and once that data is compromised you know going back to those 90-day jail sentences a lot of people say who've been victims of this crime that's just not enough it's

a joke they need to do better for that they need to realize how serious of a case this is. And once she gets out after 90 days, 90 days is not going to teach her enough. She can keep doing this. Maybe not to me, but maybe to someone else who hasn't been through it. And it's just going to keep going. And who's working on these? Because these sound like much larger problems than just one company in one place. Who are the authorities responsible for working on this? Well, it'd be the companies themselves, right? I mean, they have an obligation. They take your money. As one victim said, you know, I pay my bank fees, pay my interest on my loans. All this should help create a better infrastructure.

Right. You know, Natalia Bozic makes a great point if you talk to her. She says financial institutions and phone, telecom providers, companies we deal with, when you open an account with them, they often ask you for your driver's license or your social insurance number. And she would argue that it's not to protect you. They might tell you it's for your own protection, but it's often the case that they're protecting themselves. They want to know who you are and where to find you if things go sideways for them. However, someone waltzed into an RBC bank,

allegedly Ogunzimbo, with a allegedly fake driver's license and was able to fool this person. And she asked a great question. I mean, you took my driver's license, you scanned it when I opened my bank account. Why on earth wouldn't you have spent 30 seconds looking that up? Especially because my account was already flagged for

previous fraud two days earlier? Why didn't you spend a minute and go to your database and look at me to two completely different looking people? And if you think of a bank, like the first words that come to mind are privacy and security. And I didn't get any of that from them. So her argument is the system completely failed here. Yeah. So I wanted to return to Oguntayimbo for a minute. Sure. Has she ever spoken out about these charges?

We can't reach her. She's been in jail since June 29th. She's got multiple trials coming up in the coming days and court appearances in Toronto. They have outstanding warrants for her. So when she's finished her trials in Halton, about an hour west of Toronto, in York region, just north of Toronto,

in Peel, she's currently facing about a dozen charges there. So she's got a pretty heavy schedule coming up as far as court appearance goes. Right. So as Agunti Imber returns to court, how will her previous convictions affect how her case is proceeding? The only way it seems to have affected her so far is a lack of bail.

That the courts have said, you know, you're under probation orders, you've been arrested again. You know, we've got to allegedly put a stop to this. However, it wouldn't have any effect whatsoever, her past convictions, on a current trial. it wouldn't have any effect whatsoever, her past convictions, on a current trial. In Canada, it's extremely hard to bring in similar fact evidence. And in fairness to any accused, especially Ogun Tiyembo, because I did something yesterday doesn't mean I did it again today. Right.

You know, there has to be more of a connection. However, if she was convicted of more of these crimes that she's facing, certainly a Crown attorney would be well within his or her rights to tell the judge, listen, this certainly isn't a first offender. This is someone who has been convicted in the past, and if we're going to have any reasonable prospect of deterrence, you should probably have a stricter sentence. Oguntimbo has a full slate of court appearances up ahead, and I'm sure that you'll be at many of those.

Thank you so much, John. My pleasure. Before we say goodbye, some news from yesterday. George Zimmerman, who you might remember was acquitted of homicide charges in the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a young, unarmed black kid. Zimmerman is suing Martin's family and the prosecutors. Zimmerman is seeking $100 million in and the prosecutors. Zimmerman is seeking $100 million in damages, alleging defamation and conspiracy. On Wednesday, the Martin family attorney made a statement calling the allegations, quote, unfounded and reckless. The lead defendant in the suit is Trayvon's mother, Sabrina Fulton. She became a national figure in the U.S. for

her social justice advocacy. That's it for today. I'm Elamin Abdelmahmoud, in for Jamie Passant. Thank you so much for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.