Article content
Three men, including a West Island resident, were arrested Wednesday by Laval police as suspects in the theft of a massive amount of client data from Mouvement Desjardins five years ago.
Laval police also said they are looking for a fourth suspect in the leak of information used to commit $8.9 million worth of fraud. Wednesday’s operation involved several Laval police officers and investigators and was the result of what the police force said was “one of the most complex investigations that the service has experienced in its history.”
Article content
“The subjects face charges of fraud over $5,000, trafficking in identifying information, possession of identifying information and identity theft. For example, the investigation revealed that one of the subjects had in his possession a list of data targeting 1.6 million Quebecers,” Laval police said in a statement. “This exhaustive investigation, carried out by Laval police officers since December 2018, aimed to investigate the fraudulent appropriation by a group of individuals, via the Accès D de Desjardins website, of sums held in the accounts of several members of the financial institution.”
The fraudsters were able to use Desjardins’s website to obtain temporary passwords with the personal information that was stolen. They then made transactions directly from bank accounts.
“These frauds, mainly affecting Desjardins business accounts, were committed mainly during the period from September 2018 to January 2019. The amount of fraud against Desjardins and its members amounts to more than $8.9 million,” Laval police wrote.
During the investigation, police carried out seven search warrants, during 2019, in Laval, Montreal and St-Augustin-de-Desmaures. The searches turned up what the Laval police described as “a significant quantity of data, both in the form of tangible documents and computer files.”
Article content
Two of the men arrested on Wednesday, Ayoub Kourdal, 36, of Pierrefonds, and Imad Jbara, 33, of St-Hubert, are scheduled to appear before a judge at the Laval courthouse Thursday morning. A third man, Nassim Alikacem, 30, of St-Augustin-de-Desmaures, was released on a promise to appear in court at a later date.
All three of the men are accused, on an arrest warrant, of defrauding Federation des Caisses populaires Desjardins and its members out of more than $5,000 between Sept. 4, 2018 and Jan. 10, 2019.
Jbara is singled out on two charges in the arrest warrant that allege he transmitted the stolen data to other people. He is alleged to have done this between Dec. 25, 2018 and April 10, 2019, while knowing the information would be used to commit fraud.
Kourdal is alleged to have taken on the identity of two different people in 2019 and in 2021.
The man still being sought in the investigation dubbed is a 36-year-old Quebec City resident. His case was filed at the Montreal courthouse.
pcherry@postmedia.com
Share this article in your social network
 "BCCI want Test specialists to play domestic cricket; Rohit, Virat, Bumrah to be exceptions")
