An unemployed Ottawa man faces 181 charges relating to “a huge web” of cyber bullying and harassment after an international investigation involving Scotland Yard that wound across Canada and into the United States and Britain.
The victims involved 38 people in Canada, the U.S. and U.K. and the crimes stretch back a dozen years, Ottawa Police said.
“It’s a huge web,” Acting Insp. Carl Cartright of Ottawa Police said in an interview Friday morning.
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“This is an extremely important and large case,” said Cartright, who has probed cyber crime for 10 years.
The man was hit Thursday with 27 counts of criminal harassment, 85 charges of defamation libel and 69 more of identity fraud after an eight-month probe called “Project Winter.”
The victims were all adults and started with one central target and branched out into an international web, Cartright said.
He said the attacks were targeted and there was no romantic angle.
“In this case, the victims did absolutely nothing wrong,” Cartright said.
“Imagine you’re a small-business owner or any business owner and somebody posts information to your clients that is false,” he said.
Cartright said police had to peel back layers of misinformation since the hacker employed various forms of Internet anonymity software.
“The individual changes the way he conducts himself online as technology evolves,” Cartright says.
“He definitely had some computer expertise,” Cartright said.
Ottawa police raided his home in the west-end of that city on Thursday and arrested him and confiscated his computer.
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“I imagine he was quite surprised,” Cartright said.
Assisting Ottawa Police Service in the eight-month investigation were RCMP, Vancouver Police, Central Saanich, B.C. police, Ontario Provincial Police, the Rothesay Regional Police in New Brunswick, Halifax, the Hertfordshire Constabulary in the United Kingdom, London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) and Ferndale, Mich., Police.
Robert Campbell, 42, of Ottawa was due to appear in court on Friday.
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