A ServiceOntario employee has been charged in connection to a stolen vehicle investigation
The employee is alleged to have “improperly obtained and misused” vehicle registration documents
A ServiceOntario employee has been charged in connection to an Ontario Provincial Police stolen vehicle resale investigation. Three other people were also charged.
The OPP said their investigation, known as Project Tailwind, focused on allegations of re-vinning and fraudulent vehicle registration. (Re-vinning refers to altering or replacing a vehicle’s unique identification number.)
Documents accessed during the ServiceOntario registration process were “improperly obtained and misused,” the police said.
“These documents were then used to facilitate giving stolen vehicles new vehicle identification numbers, allowing them to be registered with the Ministry of Transportation Ontario, sold and driven on public roads as legitimate vehicles.”
Search warrants were executed this month in Brampton, Kitchener and Maple. Those led to the recovery of six stolen vehicles, and electronic devices.
All suspects will appear in court in Newmarket next month.
Related: Seven people have been charged following an OPP investigation into alleged driving test bribes
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
