RCMP intel boss Ortis leaked top secret Five Eyes signals to multi-billion-dollar Iranian terror financing and drug money laundering networks: Jury Trial

Toronto currency trader Cameron Ortis leaked intel documents to, Salim Henareh, cited in $1.167-Billion worth of transactions analyzed by Fintrac and Ortis' elite RCMP unit

In 2015 Cameron Ortis, a senior RCMP intelligence officer, systematically planned and leaked top secret “signals intelligence” from the Five Eyes to the Toronto-area agents of Altaf Khanani, the Dubai-based mastermind of a multi-billion-dollar money laundering network that moved funds for transnational drug dealers and terror groups including al-Qaeda and the Taliban, according to documents and allegations heard Thursday by a jury in Ottawa.

Khanani’s Canadian agents, Toronto currency shop owners and real estate mortgage lenders, were believed by federal police to be massive money launderers in their own rights, the jury heard Thursday, with two of them — Salim Henareh and Farzam Mehdizadeh — transferring almost $700-million according to records leaked by Ortis to Khanani’s network in 2015, before Mehdizadeh, who was on a CSIS watch list, escaped back to Iran, evading an RCMP criminal investigation.

While the jury has yet to hear this evidence, an email filed in court, and sent to Ortis by his RCMP analyst in early 2015, says Henareh’s Toronto currency exchange handled a stunning $1.167 Billion in wire transfers from 2008 to 2014, in comparison to about $460-million handled by Mehdizadeh’s currency shop.

Ortis, the former RCMP intelligence director, faces six charges, including four counts of violating the Security of Information Act.

The Crown is alleging Ortis leaked Fintrac records to Henareh in 2015, and planned to leak Five Eyes intel directly to Khanani, according to encrypted documents and email accounts captured from Ortis’ electronic devices, which have so far, only been partially de-encrypted by RCMP analysts.

A graduate of the University of B.C. (UBC) who studied under prominent China-expert Paul Evans, Ortis was arrested in August 2019 after an internal RCMP probe discovered that he had been leaking incredibly sensitive Five Eyes operational plans to the controlling minds of a Vancouver-based tech company called Phantom Secure.

That company, run by Vincent Ramos and a West Vancouver-based Asian man named Jean-François Eap, offered modified Blackberry sets to global drug-trafficking cartels, allowing the gangsters to set up drug deals, money laundering transfers and contract killings with encrypted messages, thus evading police in the United States, Australia and United Kingdom.

What has emerged in the opening week of Ortis’ long-awaited trial — according to The Bureau’s analysis of testimony and public documents — is that Ortis, a close confidante of former RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, evidently leveraged his cutting edge knowledge of Chinese criminal hacking networks, which he and Paul Evans developed at UBC almost 20 years ago, to craft a front persona as a hacker in possession of government secrets.

And by using his RCMP office and access to the highest levels of Five Eyes operational plans targeting state-sponsored criminals and global money launderers, often including so-called “high side” signals intelligence shared with Canada by its more powerful Five Eyes allies, Ortis systematically identified potential clients such as Khanani, who were using encryption services from criminal tech masterminds such as Ramos, in Vancouver.

On Thursday the trial heard from its second witness, Sgt. David Proulx, of the RCMP's Sensitive and International Investigations (SII) unit in Ottawa.

Ortis, wearing a blue, tailored suit, with mauve shirt and light-blue tie, sat listening to Proulx while taking notes, casually chatted and joked with his lawyers during breaks, and presented a confident demeanour of studied elegance and innocence.

The only external indicator of the incredibly serious charges he faces was an electronic bracelet on Ortis’ left ankle, sitting a few inches above his brown, cognac leather oxford shoes.

The jury heard this week that Ortis will not deny he collected and transferred classified information to Khanani’s network and to Vincent Ramos and Phantom Secure.

His argument will be that he had authorization to do so, the jury heard.

This suggests that Ortis plans to testify he was running undercover operations perhaps only known to himself or a few RCMP superiors, from a secretive unit of intelligence analysts also known to few inside the RCMP.

The Project

This week Crown prosecutor Judy Kliewer told the jury that when Ramos was arrested by the FBI in 2018, they summoned RCMP staff sergeant Guy Belley to Las Vegas to analyze a Ramos computer. 

On Wednesday, Belley testified he was shocked to find an anonymous emailer had been communicating with Ramos in early 2015 and leaking portions of classified documents that revealed secret operational plans targeting Phantom Secure and its clients – “some of whom are significant global actors” according to one of the emails.

The jury heard that Ortis had become aware in 2014 that Canada’s intelligence allies were concerned Phantom Secure and other encryption services were enabling powerful money launderers and drug traffickers, and disrupting these tech-assisted global criminals became a tactical priority for the RCMP.

As then head of RCMP’s elite intelligence branch, Operations Research, Ortis was perfectly positioned to leverage reports from his analysts on Phantom Secure and formulate his approach to Ramos and his clients.

Belley’s discovery in Las Vegas of emails and sensitive intel shared with Ramos triggered a high stakes RCMP mole hunt in 2018, called Project Ace, which ultimately led to searches of Ortis’ downtown Ottawa bachelor pad, in September 2019.

Among a cache of electronic devices discovered and seized by the RCMP, the most important find according to Kliewer, was an encrypted USB stick, containing meticulously organized folders of emails, documents and plans, including a scheme called “The Project.”

On Thursday, Sgt. David Proulx explained to the jury what Project Ace investigators found in the USB stick files they were able to decrypt, including one called “Bootstrap 4.”

“What we found in Bootstrap 4, was documents related to the Khanani Money Laundering network,”  Proulx explained to Kliewer, as she displayed some of these documents on a film screen in Ottawa’s Ontario Superior Court.

Essentially, court heard, these USB files contained emails, cover letters and scripts Ortis made to execute his plans, as well as files and excerpts of files Ortis clandestinely transferred to Henareh and another alleged Toronto-area Khanani agent in 2015, along with the complete “payload” caches of classified records Ortis planned to leak to Farzam Mehdizadeh and Khanani and others, if he could persuade them to become paying clients for fuller versions of top secret records.

These records also revealed Ortis’ study of best practices for clandestine meetings, and how he proposed to receive payments from criminal clients.

For example, court heard, emails and records captured from the USB stick show Ortis asked Ramos to pay $20,000 for RCMP documents that would enable Ramos and his associates to evade money laundering investigations, and Ortis planned to collect the fee in cash, in a clandestine meeting in Montreal.

The Canadian Scene

Court heard that in the file called “The Project” Ortis collected many hundreds of pages of records on Khanani’s global network, and this cache of Canadian intelligence stemmed from U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Australian Federal Police probes which sought to dismantle Khanani’s financial empire.

Records in “The Project” showed that according to Australian police and Five Eyes intelligence, Khanani headed a “multibillions international money laundering syndicate” and his networks “facilitated billions (in transfers) internationally” for terrorist groups and transnational organized crime.  

Khanani’s schemes relied on clandestine cash collection in cities worldwide, these intelligence records show, and laundering these funds through a sprawling international network of currency traders.

A document in “The Project” was titled “The Canadian Scene” and described how money mules and currency shops in Toronto were used in the global Khanani network which Australian police had first discovered and alerted the RCMP of in 2014.

The disclosure to the RCMP was part of a Five Eyes plan – driven by the U.S. and Australian governments and involving undercover D.E.A. agents and confidential informants – targeting a suspected network of Khanani-linked financial businesses in Mississauga and Toronto and their principals, Mehdizadeh, Henareh, and a man named Muhammad Ashraf.

Ortis used his knowledge of the plan and his access to its records, the jury heard, to develop his own business opportunities.

“I need to get some docs to Altaf Khanani, preferably using a secure contact,” said one of documents from the file called “The Project.”

As a key part of the network, according to records in “The Project” file — Mehdizadeh and his family and Iranian community associates ran immigration investment, currency exchange and jewelry businesses in Toronto, with connections to a Tehran-based company called Arya Exchange.