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1,154,153 views Dec 8, 2020 CANADA Cameron Ortis was once the RCMP's top intelligence officer. He has now been charged with revealing Canadian secrets to unauthorized people and plotting to leak more. The Fifth Estate exposes a backstory few people know about — from a Mexican drug cartel and Australian biker gangs to gambling, money laundering and encrypted cellphones.
TRANSCRIPY
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]
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