Police intercept one million organized crime BlackBerry messages; 29 arrests
TU THANH HA
The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jun. 12 2014
Police in Quebec intercepted more than a million BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN communications as part of a crackdown against organized crime that culminated with 29 arrests Thursday.
The RCMP said it was the first time that such a technique had been used on such a large scale in an investigation.
Each BlackBerry device has a unique eight-digit number called a personal identification number or PIN.
Direct PIN messaging is perceived to be a more secure communications route because it allows BlackBerry users to send messages directly between devices over wireless networks, bypassing e-mail servers.
Thanks to their wiretaps of BlackBerry PIN messages, “investigators were able to identify the suspects in relation to a series of violent crimes committed on the Montréal territory between 2010 and 2012: arson, weapon cache, forcible confinement, drug trafficking, gangsterism and conspiracy,” the RCMP said in a communiqué.
Blackberry communications have also drawn the attention of Communications Security Establishment Canada, the country's electronics eavesdropping spy agency.
In a CSEC slide obtained by the Globe and Mail last year, the agency notes that Blackberry messages are scrambled and not encrypted and adds that PIN-to-PIN is "subject to same vulnerability."
Codenamed Operation Clemenza, the operation by a joint anti-mob squad of Mounties and Montreal police targeted two organized crime cells.
One cell was associated with the late mobster Giuseppe De Vito.
A captain in the Rizzuto mafia family, Mr. De Vito died suddenly of cyanide poisoning at the Donnacona federal penitentiary in July, 2013.
His death came two weeks after his wife, Adele Sorella, was found guilty of first-degree murder for killing their two girls while he was a fugitive from authorities in 2009.
The other cell involved in the latest operation is alleged by police to be headed by two brothers, Antonio and Roberto Bastone, who were among those arrested Thursday morning.
The 29 suspects face 87 criminal counts, on charges such as drug trafficking, assault, extortion, kidnapping and arson.
Three other suspects are still at large.
Reports that the police had managed to intercept PIN-to-PIN messages first surfaced two years ago, in court proceedings in the murder case against convicted mobster Raynald Desjardins.
A former associate of Montreal godfather Vito Rizzuto, Mr. Desjardins became involved in the bloody power struggle between pretenders to the leadership of the Montreal Mafia, following Mr. Rizzuto’s 2006 extradition to the U.S.
Mr. Desjardins was arrested in December of 2011 on first-degree murder charges in the shooting death of Salvatore (Sal the Ironworker) Montagna, identified by the FBI as the former acting head of the notorious Bonanno crime family of New York.
In 2012, La Presse and CTV Montreal reported that prosecutors planned to include BlackBerry text messages in their case against Mr. Desjardins.
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