Robocalls court filings shed new light on case, possible Sona involvement
An Elections Canada investigator alleges he had reason to believe that Michael Sona admitted he was involved in misleading robocalls in the 2011 federal election and also alleges that the former Conservative Party campaign worker had hinted he didn’t act alone.
Sona is the only person charged over the “Pierre Poutine” calls sent out to more than 7,000 voters in Guelph, Ont., on election day.
These new but unproven allegations against Sona are detailed in a sworn statement from Elections Canada investigator Allan Mathews, which came to light Monday only after a judge issued a publication ban restricting the reporting of some of the statement’s details.
The publication ban, ordered by Judge Célynne Dorval, was issued at the request of Sona’s lawyer and with agreement of the Crown prosecutor.
Sona’s lawyer, Norm Boxall, said it is important that cases are not tried in the media before they go to court.
“A temporary publication ban is often important to preserve the integrity of the investigation by the both the Crown and the Defence as well as to preserve the fairness of the trial,” Boxall said in an emailed statement.
The order forbids the reporting of certain paragraphs of a document called an Information To Obtain (ITO), sworn by Mathews on May 3, 2013, that allowed him to get a court order for records from a credit company related to a credit card used to pay for the robocalls. The allegations by Mathews have not been proven in court.
The Citizen is considering whether to challenge the ban in court.
Sona, who has repeatedly stated he believes he is being made a scapegoat by the party, was charged in April with breaching the Elections Act, a violation that carries a fine of $5,000 or up to five years in prison.
Boxall is to appear in court in Guelph on Thursday morning for a pre-trial conference along with a federal prosecutor.
In one of the paragraphs of the ITO not subject to the publication ban, Mathews writes: “Based on the facts identified in my grounds for belief, I have concluded that Michael Sona was involved with the sending of misleading messages to electors in Guelph on May 2, (2011), that he admitted to personal involvement while leaving some suggestion that he did not act alone.”
He also alleges, “Further, a number of identified steps were taken by one or more persons on April 30 through May 2 in relation to these messages, which included the purchase and use of prepaid Peoples Trust payment cards, which I have left a record of time, location and use.”
Mathews swore the ITO to ensure his investigation legally obtained information about disposable Vanilla credits, purchased at Shoppers Drug Mart locations in Guelph shortly before the election. These cards were used to pay the Edmonton-based voice broadcasting company, RackNine, that the suspect used to send out the misleading automated calls.
He asked for a court order to obtain the list of other transactions, other than the RackNine purchases, that were recorded against the same four disposable Visa and MasterCard accounts. Although he had obtained this data previously, Mathews went back to the court in May for the order to ensure the evidence was legally acquired.
These other transactions against the credit cards may have helped investigators determine the identity of the person behind the robocalls.
Sona served as director of communications to Conservative candidate Marty Burke’s losing campaign in Guelph. He later landed a job on Parliament Hill, working for Conservative MP Eve Adams, but resigned when reports of the investigation into the Guelph calls surfaced last year.
The ITO, the first filed by Mathews since nearly a year earlier, summarizes some new but unproven developments in the investigation that led up to the laying of the single charge under the Elections Act against Sona in April.
In sections of the document not subject to the publication ban, Mathews reports that Elections Canada commissioned an independent audit by a forensic accounting firm to confirm details about log-ons to RackNine that the company had provided. The audit by Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton finds minor errors in information provided by RackNine but supports its overall findings.
“An independent third party audit of the RackNine database conducted at the request of Elections Canada confirmed that the RackNine database contains the same records of use as are described by Matthew Meier, the CEO of RackNine.”
Meier, whose company was used to send the deceptive calls to voters in Guelph, provided Elections Canada with a report in May 2012, which he gleaned from session logs.
His report found an electronic link between whoever set up the Pierre Poutine call and another account belonging to Andrew Prescott, a Burke campaign worker who had an account with RackNine.
The latest court documents also clear up the mystery of the IP address that electronic records from RackNine show was used to set up the calls. When Elections Canada asked the provider, Rogers Hi-Speed Internet, to trace the address — 99.225.28.34 — the company told Elections Canada that it corresponded to a home near Guelph with no link to the affair, which seemed to be a dead end for investigators.
Rogers subsequently double-checked its records at the request of investigators.
“In the intervening time the modem had been returned to Rogers and given to another customer,” Mathews alleges in the ITO.
“The information formerly given to Elections Canada was that of the current user, and not that of the previous user. Rogers subsequently learned the customer history of the modem device. The true subscriber during the time frame requested was the Marty Burke campaign.”
The ITO also gives new details about the infamous Pierre Poutine “burner phone,” saying Mathews had learned it had been shipped to a Future Shop on Airport Road in Brampton and, two weeks later, sold at a Future Shop location at 151 Stone Road West in Guelph at 7:04 p.m., April 30, 2011.
The purchaser paid $45.30 in cash for the phone, the receipt showed. When it was first activated, it was picked up by a cellphone tower on York Road in Guelph, Mathews said.
Mathews also alleges he determined that one of the disposable credit cards had been bought with cash from a Shoppers location at 6:49 p.m. the same night — just 15 minutes before the phone was purchased.
Mathews said he drove between the two locations and found they are 1.3 kilometres apart and in nearly a straight line.
In previously released documents, Mathews described how the phone was registered to the bogus name “Pierre Poutine” using a fake address in Joliette, Que.