Ortis was 'on the cusp' of passing state secrets to foreign entity at time of arrest, Crown alleged

CameronOrtis, convicted by a jury Wednesday of violating Canada's secrets act,was arrested when he was "on the cusp" of passing state secrets to a foreign entity, a Crown prosecutor alleged during the former RCMP official's bail hearing in 2019.

When RCMP officers raided Cameron Ortis's condo in late August 2019, they were hunting for clues related to leaks of internal police documents to criminal groups.

Their investigation took a quick turn into the murky world of international espionage when they analyzed electronic equipment and documents seized at the residence of the national police force's top intelligence analyst.

According to an unsealed 2020 court document, which can now be reported on, RCMP investigators fearedOrtiswas planning to share information with Chinese officials.

On several to-do lists police found in his condo, Ortis noted mundane activities like donating blood, cleaning his apartment, working out and filing dental insurance claims in addition to tasks related to what he called "the project." Prosecutors said this was the name given to his plan to leak state secrets.

On his computer equipment, RCMP agents discovered 488 highly classified documents.

According to information disclosed in court in the fall of 2019which can now be reported publicly for the first timealmost all of these documents were printed by Ortis at his RCMP offices between September 2018 and August 2019.

Ortis, a civilian with a doctorate in international relations, was serving at the time as the director of the RCMP's national intelligence co-ordination centre in Ottawa. He had access to Canada's Top Secret Network (CTSN),a computer network used by the federal government to share classified information. CTSN held intelligence from Canada'sallies in the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing network that includes the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

During his bail hearings in October 2019, federal prosecutor Judy Kliewer alleged Ortis was in the final stages of aplan to pass state secrets to a "foreign entity."

Ortis was arrested by his RCMP colleagues on September 12, 2019before he acted on that plan, said the Crown. During the bail hearing, Kliewerargued that if Ortis had carried outhis plan, the consequences would have been catastrophic for the security of Canada, its allies and intelligence agents in the field.

"It was like he was holding a loaded gun and about to pull the trigger," she said.

On Wednesday, a juryfound Ortis guilty of all charges against him.

Testifying in his own defence, Ortis claimed he was actually working on a secret mission from a foreign agency. Ortis said the plan was to lure criminals to an encrypted email service to allow authorities to collect intelligence about them.

Some charges were dropped in 2022

Ortis said he sent the information to police targets in order to prove his "bona fides."

Now that his trial is over, CBC is allowed to publish previously unreported allegations made against Ortis during his bail hearingfour years ago. Before the verdict, those allegationswerecovered by a publication ban.

This new series of allegations, related to a potential case of international espionage, were not raised in Ortis's trial and were neverproved in court.

In fact, four charges against Ortis related to alleged infractions under section 16 of the Security of Information Act, which deals with communications with foreign entities or terrorist organizations, were droppedby the court in 2022.

In that ruling, which was also under a publication ban until Wednesday, the court concludedthat restrictions on the use of classified information at the trial would prevent Ortis from presenting a full defence.

According to that ruling, Ortis was preparing to argue that he accumulated classified information to make a presentation to senior RCMP members "concerning how to best respond to the growing threat from a specific foreign entity."

Police found scanned business cards of Chinese officials

What most concerned investigators was that one of Ortis's to-do lists mentioned the need to "start to plan first contact." When the RCMP raided his residence, Ortis's current to-do list referred to setting up an initial meeting at a restaurant on the third Thursday in September.

According to a 100-pages-plus "information to obtain" (ITO) document reported on by the Canadian Press, police went throughOrtis's recent police database searches as part of their initial investigationin June and September of 2019.

"Among his queries were subjects that related to China, embassies, and something that appears to be a national security investigation,"wroteRCMP Sgt. Jamie Driscollin a sworn affidavit supporting the ITO.

Investigators also found saved copies of two business cards from officials at the Chinese embassy.

"I believe Ortis planned to communicate safeguarded information to one or both of the Chinese officials," Driscollwrote.

The 2020 ITO was used tosupportthe RCMP application to obtain an additional search warrant and production orders.

A 'business proposition'

After growing up in British Columbia, Ortis joined the RCMP in 2006. In 2015, he used an alias to make an unusual offer to a British Columbia businessman named Vincent Ramos.

Ramos headed a company, Phantom Secure, that sold encrypted phones to members of organized crime and was already in the sights of police forces in several countries.

"You do not know me. I have information that I am confident you will find very valuable,"Ortiswrote in an email under a pseudonym, adding his pitch was a simple "business proposition."

In his emailsto Ramos, Ortis presented himself as a hacker and said he had information that Ramos could find useful.

"It is not risk free, of course, but the risk to reward ratio will prove to be more than acceptable," he said.

Ortis asked for $20,000 in exchange for confidential information that was in the hands of the RCMP.

He also proactively offered Ramosinformation that the Crown saidcould have endangered the life of an undercover RCMP officer who had attempted to infiltrate Phantom Secure. Ortis rejected that claim during his testimony, saying he never released the undercover agent's name.

'This is not a trick'

According to the Crown, Ortis also offered information from police files to members of a group involved in money laundering a CD-ROM containing a sample of the material at his disposal.

"This is not a trick and I do not work for a law enforcement or intelligence agency, demonstrated, I think, by the attached documents. I do, however, have the ability to access a wide variety of information," he said in his communications with this group.

The jury has heard there is no evidence Ortis ever received money in exchange for confidential information.

The RCMP became aware of the illicit contacts with Ramos in 2018, when he was arrested in the United States and his electronic devices were seized and analyzed by police.

WATCH |RCMP intelligence leaker found guilty of violating secrets act

RCMP intelligence leaker found guilty of violating secrets act

10 months ago

Duration 2:09

Former RCMP intelligence official Cameron Ortis has been found guilty of leaking secret information to police targets and charged with multiple counts under the Security of Information Act. It was the first time the law has been tested in court.

Seeing one of their documents in Ramos's possession, RCMP investigators concluded there was a mole in their organization.

RCMP analysts quickly determined that Ortis was one of the people who had access to the sensitive information found in Ramos's computer.

The ensuing investigation led them to surreptitiously enter Ortis's residence on August 26, 2019. There they started to copy and analyzethe information on his electronic equipment.

Ortis tried to make documents untraceable, Crown said

The RCMP seized five laptops, three cellphones, five portable hard drives, 10 memory sticks and a few pre-paid SIM cards from Ortis's condo in Ottawa.

Although some of his computer tools were encrypted, at least one laptop was accessible without a password, which allowed RCMP experts to move quickly.

Investigators found 488 classified documents in a laptop under a folder called "Batman," prosecutors said.

Based on the dates on the documents, investigators concludedthey had been printed mostly on weekends and holidays, when fewer colleagues would have been in the office to see Ortis at work.

Prosecutors said Ortis removed the headers and footers from certain documents before transforming them into PDFs, to make them untraceable.

"The only inference is that these documents were created for the purpose of sharing them, communicating secret information to people who would be interested in them," Kliewerallegedduring the bail hearing.

"Given the nature of the documents these are no longer organized-crime directed documents. These are all documents that related to national security and would only be of interest to a foreign entity."

One of the "processed" documents was created in the middle of the night between September 8 and9and placed ina folder called "first meeting," saidKliewer.

Driscollsaid that inside that file, he sawan image of a top secret document from the National Security Agency,the U.S.foreign signalsintelligence agency.

Organized and meticulous

She added the file was classified "gamma," meaning it was one of the most closely-held secrets in Canada's hands.

During their search, police discovered intriguing to-dolists that paint a picture of Ortis as organized and meticulous.

One list related to his "project" laid out a series of tasks, such as printing and scanning documents, installing software or making backup copies of files.

One of his to-do lists mentioned the need to "start to plan first contact." When the RCMP raided his residence, the current to-do list referred to setting up an initial meeting at a restaurant on the third Thursday in September.

Kliewer said Ortis was arrested three days after the second RCMP raid, when he was at a "critical stage" of his project and"on the cusp" of a great betrayal. No information was provided at the bail hearing regarding the identity of the country that could have been approached by Ortis.

"He is supposed to be working with these documents for intelligence and to assist law enforcement to protect Canadians against criminal activity and also to ensure national security," said Kliewer. "But he is going to work to cull these documents to share them with people adverse [to] these interests."

Ortis said he had been 'miserable' for years

Despite the Crown's argumentthat Ortis could flee the country or find a way to pass on his secrets, he was released on bail in October 2019.

That decision was overturned on appeal a few days later, and Ortis was detained for more than three years, until the end of 2022.

Driscoll wrote that police intercepted Ortis's communications while he was in custody.

In October 2019, Ortis discussed his future, said the ITO document.

"I owe everybody an explanation of how I think this happened and what happened," he said.

"I'll never do this again, I'll never go into a deep dive in a career like this, at the sacrifice of family and friends, there's no f--king way, and my own happiness because I've been miserable the last 4-5 years so .... never again, it's just not worth it."

In recent months, he has lived with numerous restrictions on hisfreedom,including a ban on access to any electronic devicesexcept to prepare for his trial.

During his bail hearing in 2019, he acknowledged he was not particularly close to his parents, who only learned after his arrest that he had anestranged 17-year-old daughter for whom he was providing parental support.

The bail hearing also heard Ortis was also responsible for the monthly payments on a $100,000 mortgage his parents took out on their condominium to cover his student loans.

Ortis will be sentenced in January. The Crown said Wednesday it will seek at least a 20-year sentence.