Rape conviction for father of Colombian kids rescued in jungle
BOGOTA, Colombia — The father of two of the four Indigenous children who survived 40 days in the Amazon after a 2023 plane crash was convicted of raping a minor, a Colombian prosecution official told AFP on Monday.
The official said Manuel Ranoque, who risks 20 years in prison, will be sentenced in the coming days.
The siblings -- aged one to 13 at the time -- were the only survivors of a jungle plane crash in May 2023 that killed the three adults onboard, including their mother.
The search for the kids captivated the world. The oldest daughter was credited with keeping her siblings alive until their spectacular rescue some three miles (five kilometres) from the crash site.
The children's survival and the dramatic rescue effort involving soldiers and Indigenous trackers is the subject of books, movies, and a Netflix documentary.
Ranoque was instrumental in the search operation, but was arrested a few months after the children were found alive and well.
He is the father of the two youngest of the four children, and stepfather to the other two.
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Globe and Mail
2 days ago
- Globe and Mail
You were targeted in a scam. Is your bank liable for the losses?
Crystal Quast had just finished writing a mystery novel when she found herself embroiled in a real-life mystery of her own. Ms. Quast, a corporate communications professional based in Waterloo, Ont., had decided to self-publish her book through Amazon. The technology behemoth's logo was on her receipts, and calls from the representatives she was dealing with came up as 'Amazon publishing' on her phone. But something felt off to Ms. Quast. The company was charging $2,500 for a publishing package that included editing, but didn't appear to be doing much of it. Ms. Quast eventually reached out to a friend at Amazon who informed her that she was dealing with an imposter. 'I was really shaken. My confidence was shaken ... I didn't think I'd ever get taken in by a scam,' Ms. Quast said. Ms. Quast is one of a growing number of Canadians falling victim to fraud, and its changing nature is raising questions about who should be liable for the losses that siphon hundreds of millions of dollars out of the economy each year. Fraud victims reported a total of $647-million in losses to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre last year, up from $577-million in 2023. Those figures likely represent just the tip of the iceberg, as an estimated 90 to 95 per cent of fraud goes unreported, according to the agency. Scammers are impersonating finance experts to steal millions – and the real ones are struggling to stop it As financial institutions have bolstered their defences, criminals have shifted tactics, creating new challenges for banks and other institutions. Victims, meanwhile, are forced to navigate a patchwork of regulations that in many cases leave them footing the bill. Geoff Morton, senior director of fraud strategy at Royal Bank of Canada, said that in the past, criminals would typically commit what's known as unauthorized fraud by gaining access to a customer's bank account and transferring funds out, all without the victim's involvement. 'That was a problem for a very long time across all the banks, not just in Canada but everywhere. And so everybody's been investing very heavily into lots of technological solutions to that,' Mr. Morton said. Banks have implemented stricter authentication requirements in recent years, making it harder for criminals to gain access to client accounts, and have also gotten better at spotting and blocking those types of fraudulent transactions, Mr. Morton said. But rather than putting an end to the theft, the new security measures have prompted the criminals to change tactics to what's known as authorized fraud, Mr. Morton said. Instead of gaining unauthorized access to a victim's account, the perpetrators are interacting directly with the victims, and convincing them to transfer funds. 'The biggest trends we're seeing these days are things like investment scams, romance scams ... where they convince the client to send a payment directly to them,' Mr. Morton said. 'That's been a shift we've seen over the last year really accelerate,' he added. That creates new challenges for banks, whose fraud detection tools are geared more toward identifying the markers of unauthorized fraud – for instance, transactions originating from new devices or locations. When the customer has fallen prey to a scam, those markers no longer apply. Instead, banks have to look for transactions that don't match the client's typical pattern of behaviour, Mr. Morton said. Addressing scams also requires more call-centre resources. In an unauthorized fraud, customers are asked a simple yes or no question: had they authorized the transaction? With authorized fraud, call-centre employees may find themselves in a trickier situation: telling a customer they've fallen prey to a scam, after the bank has blocked the transaction. Still, customers may insist it's a valid transaction and that the payment be made. 'You have to break this spell that the client is under,' Mr. Morton said. In many cases, the victims have been coached by the scammer on what to say when the bank calls to verify the transaction, he added. 'It's a whole element of behaviour that we haven't had to deal with in the past as a bank.' Victims can be so bought into the scam that they refuse to heed the bank's advice. British digital bank Revolut has in some instances resorted to asking suspected scam victims to take selfies while holding up a sheet of paper that states the bank warned them against completing a particular transaction. Banks aren't the only institutions affected by what the Ontario Securities Commission has described as a massive surge in online scams and fraud. The deceptive and unauthorized use of a company's name or logo, known as brand abuse, has had such a significant impact on Amazon that the tech giant has taken the matter to court. In late 2023, Amazon sued what it described as a 'ring' of individuals and entities based in the United States and Pakistan for scamming authors by falsely claiming to be affiliated with Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing, the company's self-publishing arm. Authors such as Ms. Quast were lured into paying what the company described as 'substantial sums of money' for inadequate or non-existent services, the company alleged. In February, the Northern District of California court awarded Amazon US$36.4-million in damages. The company said it will 'evaluate its options to most effectively use any damages recovered to benefit those impacted by impersonation scams.' 'The ultimate fraud machine': Scammers are using AI to target people and businesses with increasingly convincing deepfakes Some countries have implemented shared liability models, which aim to prompt institutions such as banks and telecoms to bolster their anti-scam measures by holding them responsible for losses. In Britain, for instance, liability for reimbursing the victims of what are known as authorized push payment scams is split equally between the bank that sent the money and the one that received it. (An authorized push payment scam occurs when a customer is tricked into a sending money to someone posing as a payee.) Singapore, meanwhile, has adopted what's known as a waterfall approach to determining who should bear the cost when a customer loses money to a phishing attack. The responsibility for compensating the victims falls first on the financial institution. If the bank has met all of its obligations under the rules, the burden shifts to the telecom company involved, then finally to the customer. 'I think that shared liability model on the surface is a good idea, because it really incentivizes every person in that chain to have skin in the game,' said Carl Davies, head of fraud and identity at Equifax Canada. 'The real challenge is, at some point, those organizations can do everything that is asked of them but the consumer will still do it because they've been bought into the scam,' he added. In Canada, the discussion around fraud liability is continuing. 'It is a patchwork right now in Canada,' said Sara Eve Levac, a lawyer and analyst at Montreal-based consumer advocacy Option consommateurs. For unauthorized credit-card transactions, the Bank Act limits the consumer's liability to $50, as long as the consumer wasn't grossly negligent. 'For any other modes of payment, there's no protection by law,' Ms. Levac said. 'You have to look at the rules under civil liability, or the contracts that the consumer has with the bank, and what we've noticed is that in many circumstances the bank will say that the consumer authorized the transaction, even if we're in the situation of a scam and the information was given under false pretenses,' she added. Option consommateurs has been advocating for changes to the Bank Act, including a uniform legal framework for all payment methods, and wording to specify that a transaction should not be considered authorized if the consumer has been tricked into providing their banking credentials. In Quebec, the government is looking to limit consumer liability for unauthorized debit transactions to $50, making the rules consistent with those governing credit-card fraud. RBC's Mr. Morton says the responsibility for tackling authorized fraud lies with multiple parties, including banks, customers, telecom companies, social media platforms and search engines. 'It's not just a bank problem to solve, we really need to bring everybody to the table,' he said. The Canadian Bankers Association has convened a roundtable, billed as the Canadian anti-scam alliance, in an attempt to do just that. Nathalie Bergeron, a spokesperson for the CBA, said banks are 'one of several lines of defence' in the fight against scams, and are continuously strengthening their security measures. 'Banks have controls – including fraud alerts and one-time passcodes – to help protect customers from fraud. Under client banking agreements, customers also share responsibility for protecting their personal information, including keeping PINs and passwords confidential,' Ms. Bergeron said in a statement. A report published last week by the Washington-based Bank Policy Institute calls on telecom, tech and social media companies to assist in the fight against fraud. 'Financial institutions cannot solve this problem alone and need cross-industry collaboration with tech and telecom to protect their mutual customers,' it reads. Scams can cost victims more than their money. Here's how to recover emotionally from fraud Ms. Quast has seen firsthand how scams impact the broader business ecosystem – from Google, whose search engine had taken her to the Amazon imposter's website, to Amazon to the banks that facilitated the payments. She used two different credit cards to pay the fake Amazon publisher. The Bank of Nova Scotia has refunded her for the payment made on its card. Ms. Quast said Toronto-Dominion Bank eventually also issued a refund, after protracted communication back and forth. A spokesperson for TD declined to provide details but said the case was closed in the spring. Ms. Quast's book Dinked: Serenity Acres: Where Secrets Barely Stay Hidden – which, coincidentally, contains an Amazon phishing scam subplot – has since been published, through Amazon's legitimate self-publishing arm. 'I'm happy with it, but it's turned what was a really joyous experience into a nightmare,' she said. 'I was thrilled that I had written my first novel, I was really happy with it, and it went from being something I was really proud of to being ashamed that I got suckered into a scam.'
CTV News
6 days ago
- CTV News
Scammers allegedly posing as Brantford Police officers
A person uses a cell phone in Ottawa on Monday, July 18, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick Residents in Brantford have been contacted by scammers pretending to be police officers. According to the Brantford Police Service, the scheme starts with a phone call. The caller, claiming to be an officer, says the Canada Border Services Agency intercepted their Amazon parcel and found 'illegal items.' To avoid arrest, the resident is told to purchase gift cards and share those codes with 'police.' 'Police will never call and ask you to buy gift cards or request personal financial information over the phone,' the social media post advised. The Brantford Police Service said they've received several reports of the phishing scam. They urge anyone who receives a similar call to hang up immediately and report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501 or online at
Calgary Herald
7 days ago
- Calgary Herald
New book unravels the story of B.C. sports mogul and Australian fugitive Con Jones
Article content Article content When the authorities tried to put a stop to all the gambling going on, Jones hired the best lawyers. Article content 'He managed to keep himself on the right side of the law through high-powered legal muscle,' said Fuller, who is selling his book online through Amazon and Chapters/Indigo. Article content 'His little trick was he never participated ever in the stakes of any game. He would have a little slot on the side of the table, (and) before each hand got dealt, you had to drop a penny in the slot. Article content 'It's amazing, (his) wealth was built up sort of a penny at a time.' Article content Jones spent a fortune enticing star lacrosse players to play for a team he began in Vancouver. Some were also hockey stars. Jones paid Newsy Lalonde $5,000 to play for his lacrosse team, at a time when Lalonde made $1,300 per season to play for the Montreal Canadiens. Article content It worked. Jones' lacrosse team won the Minto Cup over the archrival New Westminster Salmonbellies in 1911. His finances also grew with the Don't Argue chain, which included 20 East Hastings St., longtime home of The Only seafood restaurant. Article content Article content Article content In Australia, Shortel/Jones also left behind an illegitimate daughter, Victoria Johnson, who reconnected with him when she was 17 and was constantly causing a kerfuffle. Victoria had a knack for conning wealthy men out of their money, which eventually landed her in an Australian jail. Article content –OPTIONAL TRIM FOR PRINT– Article content 'She was a real talent, in a criminal sense,' said Fuller. Article content 'It was breathtaking, the scope of it. She would pretend to be someone really wealthy who had this huge inheritance coming, and then once she got to know somebody, she would borrow money from them, usually quite a big sum. And then disappear.' Article content –END OPTIONAL TRIM– Article content Jones and his family still managed to remain quite respectable in the public eye, building a handsome mansion in Shaughnessy in 1922 that was adorned with the latest rage, a King Tut-themed chandelier. Article content Article content Jones also put a $1,000 down payment on a site in east Vancouver to build Con Jones park in 1920, which was a major venue for lacrosse, soccer and baseball for decades. It's now known as Callister Park, after the man who had sold it to Jones, who had never paid off the mortgage on the land. Article content Fuller discovered all this through his grandmother Margaret, whose second marriage was to one of Con Jones' sons, Dill. Article content When his grandmother died in 2002, she left behind boxes of the Jones archive, including diaries, metal token/coins that were used at the Don't Argue, and a couple of dazzling scrapbooks featuring newspaper clippings, photos and illustrations. Article content Sadly, the health of Jones declined in the 1920s after decades of alcoholism. He died on June 3, 1929, at only 59 years old. Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content
