The Phone Scammers Next Door

The house on Castle Frank Crescent was quintessential Rosedale, with a red-brick exterior, a bay window and an old-growth maple in front. Out back, a wide patio sat beneath a verdant canopy stretching down into the Rosedale Valley ravine. On move-in day, curious neighbours chittered about the new arrivals, an attractive young couple named Chakib Mansouri and Majdouline Alouah and their two adorable mop-topped sons. Mansouri, a two-tone Rolex dangling off his wrist, drove a black Range Rover, wore designer sunglasses and sported a high fade. According to his online profile, he had earned an MBA at Concordia University and led fundraising efforts for the Red Cross. His wife, Alouah, professed to be a graduate of Concordia too, as well as a successful consultant and entrepreneur. Plump-lipped and pouty, she drove a grey-blue Porsche Cayenne and practically dripped in high fashion: Prada jacket, Fendi moon boots, Gucci heels, Dior sunglasses, Balenciaga this, YSL that.

In winter they skied at Mont Tremblant, and in summer they dropped the kids at the rich-kid day camp Mooredale House, where they rubbed elbows with other upwardly mobile types. Their boys were friends with Drake’s son, Adonis, and when the family went to Raptors games, they sat courtside.

By all appearances, Mansouri and Alouah were textbook arrivistes who had amassed the right connections, income and postal code to ascend Toronto’s new-money ranks. Yet something seemed amiss. Despite the apparent means to buy a house—or perhaps multiple—they were renters, squeezed into the main floor with two units above. Castle Frank is a tight-knit street, with an appointed “mayor” and regular block parties, but the pair rarely interacted with their neighbours, shying away from small talk, barely waving when waved at.

That’s not to say conversation would have elucidated much anyway. Online, they were linked to a web of vague-sounding businesses. Mansouri, for instance, was the owner of Grind Managment—an e conspicuously absent—and a transportation logistics company whose description was pure bafflegab: “Chakib Mansouri leads innovation in transport working with global giants at Transport Inter-B to address future challenges through novel solutions.” Another online profile stated that he was CEO at “freelance.” Alouah dotted her social media posts with hashtags like #selfmademillionaire, #girlpower and #cryptocurrency, and she bragged often, if opaquely, about her professional successes.

Most suspicious was that they never appeared to work. Throughout the winter of 2024/25, Alouah’s Porsche sat untouched in the driveway, snow collecting on top. Mansouri also seemed to hold no apparent day job, at least not outside the home. Yet the pair had plenty of time for indulgences, which they chronicled tirelessly on social media: Thanksgiving brunch at the Ritz-Carlton, desserts by candlelight under the CN Tower, ringside seats for UFC at Scotiabank Arena, oysters and cocktails at the French restaurant Leméac in Montreal. When Mansouri ran errands, he parked his Range Rover wherever he pleased—busy main thoroughfares, congested side streets, bike lanes—and punched the four-ways as if to indicate both sorry and not my problem. By the fall of 2023, Mansouri and Alouah were so engrossed in their lives of leisure that neither picked up on the vehicles tailing them, day after day. Nor did they notice the plainclothes officers posted up on street corners, in condo lobbies and at cafés, collecting evidence that would expose the couple’s part in an audacious scam that stole more than $185 million from victims in Toronto, across Canada and around the world.

The trail of clues that would lead the RCMP to Mansouri and Alouah’s front door began in London, England, in 2021. The Cyber Defence Alliance, a non-profit group of investigators who work on behalf of member banks, kept hearing the term “iSpoof” in criminal chatrooms and other dark-web networks. Many CDA investigators are ex–law enforcement, but the organization differs from police in a crucial way: whereas police deal with known criminality, the CDA roams the digital plains, scanning the horizon for future threats. Its investigators dug into iSpoof and were startled by what they discovered. The URL iSpoof.cc listed no ownership or contact information and accepted payment only in cryptocurrency. The site gave customers access to a service that enabled them to alter their caller IDs and phone numbers, making it appear as if they were calling from a bank, an insurance provider, a government agency or wherever else they liked. It was like *67, the caller ID–blocking feature, but on steroids. The service featured a user-friendly digital dashboard with custom hold music, fake call-centre background noise, PIN-capture technology and a “spy” mode setting. It also promised complete encryption and anonymity. The server logs, iSpoof assured prospective clients, were deleted at the end of every day.

The site was blatant fraud, yet iSpoof blithely mimicked the tone of any legitimate consumer service website. A cheerful video guided new users through the “spoofing” process, and a PDF with cute illustrations detailed each step toward a successful con. “Flexibility and freedom: they’ll never know it was you!” it read. “You can pick any number you want before you call. Your opposite will be thinking you’re someone else. It’s easy and works on every phone worldwide!” Customers could choose from an array of packages. The cheapest, for a flat fee of $170, allowed for 150 minutes of “spoof time.” The platinum bundle, for $850 a month, offered 2,500 minutes.

Step one for an iSpoof customer was to purchase names and numbers through a “smishing” campaign—text-based ­phishing—or from a dark-web provider like Briansclub, which sells real consumer information acquired from corruptible employees at banks and government agencies. The best targets were the elderly, many of whom could be convinced of just about anything. Some lists highlighted targets who had been successfully scammed before and were considered soft marks worth trying again.

Through the iSpoof dashboard, the fraudster would enter the real banking information of a target and dial their number. When the target answered, an automated voice would identify the call as coming from the customer’s bank and read out the target’s real name, number and address followed by a list of fictitious transactions. “If this wasn’t you,” it would say, “press 2.” The iSpoof user guide boasted that this step—the target actively ­participating—worked wonders: “The reason this feature works well is because it gives the feel that the target is calling in ­themselves which immediately brings ease to the target.” The automated voice would then prompt the target to key in their confidential client PIN, the resulting entry appearing on the fraudster’s dashboard, digit by digit. The call was then transferred to the “next available customer service rep,” which was really the fraudster, who had been listening on spy mode the entire time.

By this point, the target was in a panic. They believed that their accounts had been hacked and their funds were at risk. They were also convinced that the call was legitimate: the caller ID and number matched that of the bank; the caller had the correct name and address; and the provided PIN was accepted. The target had nibbled; now it was up to the fraudster to set the hook.

This is where Mansouri worked his magic. Hopping on the line, he would cheerily introduce himself as one of the bank’s customer service representatives and reassure the target that he would address the problem. First, to complete the verification process, he needed a few more identifying details: date of birth, most recent transactions and the like. Simultaneously, on a second line, Mansouri would dial the bank, using iSpoof to make it seem like the call was coming from the customer, and claim that he was having trouble logging into his account. He already knew most of the necessary information, but when the bank asked for a detail he didn’t have, he’d place the bank on hold, switch to the target and ask for it. Within minutes, he’d have reset the password. He’d tell the target that the problem had been successfully resolved and end the call, then log in to the account and drain it.

Criminals flocked to iSpoof, drawn by word of mouth and ads on the encrypted social messaging site Telegram. The service was as ingenious as it was despicable. At its height, it had nearly 60,000 users across the globe, and 20 people were being contacted by iSpoofers every minute of every day. The average amount taken per victim was $16,000, though one man lost $4.8 million.

The CDA triangulated the location of the site’s owner and operator to the UK and handed its findings over to London’s Metropolitan Police Service, whose investigators focused on uncovering their identity. They purchased a trial iSpoof account and traced the crypto payment to the bank account of Tejay Fletcher, a 35-year-old East Londoner with a head of copper-tipped dreadlocks. Fletcher had grown up in a house with a single mother and had worked with a youth charity, but he ultimately accumulated 18 convictions related to 36 offences, including identity falsification and possession of the proceeds of crime. He and a collaborator had hired a freelance ­programmer to create iSpoof, which they hosted on servers in rotating countries to obfuscate the trail. Over 16 months, the site brought in roughly $5 million. Fletcher’s cut was more than half.

He took little care to conceal his newfound wealth. He lived in a flat with expansive views of Royal Victoria Dock and the London skyline. With a glittering $18,700 Rolex on his wrist, he drove around the city in luxury vehicles, including a $390,000 Lamborghini and a $93,000 Range Rover. (He bought a matching one for his girlfriend.) He was active in an iSpoof channel on Telegram, where he conducted polls about which new tools users would like to see. In early January of 2022, he wished users a happy new year and encouraged them to scam with abandon. “All back to work, back to getting that bag,” he wrote. “Make this year special, stack those Satoshis.”

By November of 2022, the Met had seen enough. They covertly followed Fletcher to his girlfriend’s two-storey home in East London. Inside, in a green basketball jersey and sweatpants, Fletcher was flopped on the bed watching TV when the front door burst open and police in riot gear rushed inside. They cuffed him and escorted him out. The next day, authorities seized the iSpoof server and collected its files—including logs and the IP addresses of iSpoof’s roughly 60,000 users, which hadn’t been deleted after all.

The iSpoof server contained some 70 million rows of data alongside scores of Bitcoin transaction records. Analysis of the data suggested that, in two years, iSpoof had facilitated some 10 million fraudulent calls. Forty per cent targeted residents in the US, 35 per cent in the UK, and the rest were spread across Canada, Ireland, Ukraine, Australia and other countries. When data analysts filtered the users in order of activity, they realized that among the most prolific iSpoofers was “User 6485,” who had spent an incredible 18,485 minutes on iSpoof and had targeted nearly 1,300 people. The IP address was located in Canada.

In the fall of 2022, the file landed on the desk of corporal Erin Power of the RCMP’s cybercrime investigative team. Power, a former social worker, had spent her first years as an RCMP officer in Labrador and then in Nunavut, working on sex crime and child exploitation cases. She saw darkness up close, the types of unspeakable horrors that startle a person awake in the night. She also honed her interrogation and investigative chops, including skills around IP tracking and data analysis. Those years were difficult at times, exacerbated by personal tragedy as several members of her family received diagnoses of cancer. In the span of a few years, she lost two aunts and three uncles, all on her father’s side. Sometimes, fear would creep in that her own diagnosis was inevitable. “At a certain point, I realized that if I flew home for each funeral, I’d go broke. That’s how frequent the diagnoses were,” she says. “Eventually, I became numb to it.”

In 2021, Power and her rescue dog, Maddie, relocated to the GTA. She was placed on the cyber team, and right away she felt pressure to produce results. In the ongoing battle between law enforcement and scammers, the latter were running away with the trophy, always a step ahead of their pursuers.

That gap is partly what prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney, seven months after being elected, to travel to the GTA with his retinue. On a sunny day in October of 2025, against a backdrop of RCMP officers, Carney spoke to a sea of cameras about the epidemic of scams and scammers in Canada. “Financial crimes take many forms, and they are rising, with devastating impacts on millions of Canadians,” he said. “Retired Canadians who spent a lifetime saving carefully are losing thousands of dollars in seconds, sometimes just for answering a call from the wrong person.” He announced an investment of $1.8 billion over four years to hire 1,000 RCMP personnel. Of those, 150 would focus on financial crimes.

When Power and her team received the file, they were strained for resources and in possession of scant information other than User 6485’s cellphone number, IP address and call logs. Their mission was to link both to a name. They turned to the RCMP’s criminal intelligence analysts, who found, through open-source database searches, that the phone number was linked to a business called Transport Inter-B and registered to one Chakib Mansouri. Power’s team ran the name through police criminal databases and unearthed a promising lead.

Seven years earlier, police in Windsor were called to the Devonshire Mall to investigate suspicious behaviour by a young man and woman using American Express cards to purchase a large volume of gift cards at the Source, Victoria’s Secret, Guess, Aerie and other retailers. Police found them inside the sporting goods store Champs. Mansouri, then 19, handed over a doctored ID with the surname Giovanni. Police inspected the ID and told the man that he didn’t look anything like the photo. They noticed, as he opened his wallet, that he had the ID of Majdouline Alouah—who resembled the woman he was with—alongside a collection of credit cards in various names. Police searched him and located additional credit cards along with his real ID: Chakib Mansouri. They arrested him, advised him of his rights and asked if he understood. Mansouri had just been released on probation with a prohibition on possessing any ID or credit cards not in his name. “Yeah, I fucking know,” he replied. “I just got out.”

Separately, another officer asked Alouah a few basic questions. She explained that they were visiting from Montreal and had arrived “by GO train,” a locomotive impossibility. Police asked for ID, and from her bra, Alouah produced it, along with two prepaid Visa gift cards, a Bay gift card and a hotel key. She pinned the blame on two associates waiting outside in a black BMW. Police located and approached the vehicle; two men, later identified as residents of Quebec, got out and began speed-walking away. Officers arrested and searched both and found credit cards in various names. On the strength of the collective evidence, they obtained a search warrant for the BMW and the suspects’ hotel room, where they found additional forged credit cards, a card-press device, a brand new TV, luxury watches, a diamond ring and a gold chain.

Alouah and Mansouri were released on bail, Alouah under the condition that she return to Quebec, have no contact with Mansouri and possess no bank cards unless they were in her legal name. The lesson didn’t stick. Eleven months later, she was arrested in Quebec alongside Mansouri and was found to be in possession of counterfeit Visa cards. Yet, somehow, her lawyer won her a conditional discharge with probation.

Mansouri and Alouah, miraculously free, found a one-bedroom condo in Montreal, near the Quartier des Spectacles, and told the landlord that they were restaurant workers who could easily cover the $1,100 monthly rent. Once they moved in, they quickly fell behind. After three months, the landlord took them to court, but they soon abandoned the unit, leaving it a mess and the landlord $3,300 in the hole. By then, they had set their sights on a fresh start in Toronto. They married, had two sons in quick succession and eventually settled into a $10,000-a-month luxury two-bedroom unit at the Shangri-La Residences. Soon, they had discovered an innovative new service called iSpoof.

Power had a clear profile of the mystery users, and immigration records fleshed out the timeline: Mansouri had arrived in Canada from Algeria in 2008 and, after being rejected for permanent residency multiple times, had no legal status in the country; Alouah had come from Morocco in the early 2010s and, after years as a permanent resident, had received Canadian citizenship. (Concordia refused to confirm or deny whether either had attended the school, citing privacy rules.) Records from telecom companies strengthened the connection further: the mystery IP address was registered to Alouah. Power had her suspects; next was finding them.

It just so happened that Alouah had gone to Turkey for surgery and was scheduled to fly into Pearson, by way of Dubai, on February 8, 2023. At customs, Alouah lied and said she owned a moving company and did painting on the side. She refused to provide her address or phone number. The customs officer let her through anyway.

RCMP officers, aware of her arrival, sat in unmarked cars outside terminal one. At the expected time, Mansouri rolled up in his Range Rover and Alouah hopped in. The police could have arrested the pair on the spot, but it wasn’t yet a slam-dunk conviction. A skilled defence lawyer might be able to navigate around the IP address and the phone number: perhaps someone had hacked their accounts or was sharing the Wi-Fi; perhaps a friend had used the computer. Police needed definitive evidence that Mansouri and Alouah had used and benefited from iSpoof. They needed to get into their apartment and, even better, inside their laptops.

From Pearson, the surveillance car trailed the Range Rover downtown but lost it in dense traffic around Front and University. Discouraged but undeterred, the RCMP turned to social media to pick up the trail. Mansouri had posted a humble-brag photo on Instagram of the underground car detailing service at his condo. Some quick research revealed that the Shangri-La employed that same company. Soon, Mansouri posted a photo of the indoor pool at the Shangri-La, which confirmed it. Power positioned officers in the hotel lobby and in cars outside, chronicling the couple’s comings and goings. All told, as many as 60 law enforcement agents were working on the case.

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In one spoof call, Mansouri impersonated a female client, affecting a valley girl voice. Incredibly, he was successful

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Meanwhile, financial analysts back at the RCMP office worked on the transaction history. They contacted the individual banks and presented them with a list of the client telephone numbers Mansouri had called. Their records of suspicious transactions lined up almost perfectly. Even better, the banks had recordings of Mansouri’s calls—more than a thousand of them. Power and her team were fascinated to listen in, retroactively, to the man as he worked. He was friendly but direct, edging on impatient. He’d begin each call the same way: “Yes, hello.”

In one call, in September of 2021, Mansouri targeted an Innisfil man and used his credit card to purchase $4,469 worth of Versace clothing. When he tried to move an additional $3,100 to a now-defunct crypto exchange called Bittrex Global, the transaction was flagged and frozen. Mansouri called the bank’s customer service representative and asked for help. He was light and jovial, coolly deflecting the fact that he had become ensnared by anti-fraud measures. “I’ve dealt with this problem so much that I’ve become a pro. I should be working at the bank!” he said, eliciting a weak laugh.

In another call, he contacted HSBC, saying that he wanted to check his balance. HSBC sent a PIN to verify his identity, and Mansouri put the representative on hold—the custom iSpoof music ­playing—while he switched lines to the target. A few moments later, he was back on the line with the correct code. Mansouri asked for the available credit card room on the account, which the rep said was $24,164. But this question triggered an additional one to verify his identity: Was there anyone else listed on the account? It was a simple query, but he didn’t know the answer. Mansouri put the rep on hold. When he returned, minutes later, he said he didn’t know. Suspicion mounting, the rep asked for his wife’s full name, but Mansouri couldn’t say. He also didn’t know her date of birth. “I don’t wish to disclose this information. Maybe you can jump to the next question?” he said. When the rep transferred the call to the fraud department, he hung up.

In a third call, Mansouri impersonated a female client, affecting a valley girl voice. Incredibly, he was successful, unlocking a credit card to purchase $9,850 in clothing. Before he hung up, he told the rep, “God bless you and your family.”

The audio evidence was voluminous, but there was a problem. While the RCMP believed the caller to be Mansouri, they needed a recent voice sample for comparison. They began discussing how to collect audio of Mansouri’s voice without raising his suspicions. Then, in May of 2023, a mini miracle. While Mansouri and Alouah were out for dinner near Yonge and Lawrence, their Range Rover was stolen, and Mansouri called police to report the theft. When an officer arrived, body camera rolling, Mansouri explained what had happened. When Power heard the news, she couldn’t believe their luck, and the RCMP’s analysts soon matched Mansouri’s voice to the bank recordings. The cherry on top: while filling out the police report, Mansouri noted which unit at the Shangri-La was theirs: 3505.

With the advent of AI, deep fakes and the many insidious ways the internet can worm its way into people’s lives, it’s perhaps surprising that the most prevalent mechanism of fraud remains the humble telephone. And yet it also makes sense: everyone has one, which makes the target pool oceanically vast. And unlike in-person scams (too much work) and mail scams (too slow), phone scamming is a high-volume game with relatively low expense and risk.

Such is the frequency of phone scams today that seeing “Unknown Caller” on our screens has become a part of ­everyday life. We answer only if we’re elderly, desperately lonely or seeking audience engagement (“scammer payback” has become a YouTube niche). Sometimes we’ll answer only to hear nothing at all, which could be an attempt by a scammer to test the legitimacy of a number so its owner can be targeted later.

The statistics are galling. According to the Angus Reid Institute, 80 per cent of Canadians have been targeted by phone scams at least once, and the array of phone scam types is techni­colour and ever-changing. There are scams that impersonate the Canada Revenue Agency, Service Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, telecommunications companies, banks and bank investigators. There are grand­parent scams, tech support scams, air duct cleaning scams, prize winner scams. There is even a scam impersonating the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. The creativity alone would be worthy of applause were the objectives not so mendacious. From January to September of last year, phone scams reported to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre accounted for more than $71 million in losses. Because as much as 95 per cent of scams go unreported, the true total could be closer to $1.4 billion.

Power’s team were anxious to make an arrest. They had spent countless hours on the case, but taking down Mansouri and Alouah too early could be ruinous. The Canadian Supreme Court decision known as the Jordan rule dictates that criminal cases going straight to trial in provincial courts must be wrapped up within 18 months, and cases that require pretrial inquiry or are tried in superior courts should take no longer than 30 months. If either condition is breached, the accused is set free, their record expunged. Power knew that once they arrested Mansouri and Alouah, they would need to deliver disclosure to the defence as soon as possible to avoid a Jordan complication. Everything had to be ready, the evidence unimpeachable. But Alouah wasn’t on the tapes. It was all Mansouri, which meant that Alouah could claim that the scam was all his doing.

If she was in on it, the condo would be full of evidence, so Power and her team got a warrant allowing them to enter it three times in 60 days. But, before a team of operators could go inside, they needed to do recon to answer some key questions: Were there cameras inside? An alarm system? A guard dog? Was anyone else living there? How many devices would they need to copy?

It just so happened that Mansouri and Alouah, true to form, had run afoul of their landlord, who had listed their condo for rent out of spite. The RCMP saw an opportunity to get inside and drummed up a plan. Power’s colleague, a male officer, would assume the role of a wealthy international businessman; Power was to play a family friend sussing out the suitability of the condo on behalf of his wife.

In October of 2023, they arrived at the lobby, where the real estate agent approached them with bad news: he had asked the pair to leave the unit for the showing, but Alouah refused. This was a problem. Power wasn’t an undercover operator, and she knew that if she engaged Alouah without disclosing her identity and advising her of her rights, she would be violating protocol. Still, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity. The officers exchanged knowing glances and agreed to proceed with the showing.

They took the elevator to the 35th floor and entered the apartment. It had large windows and was smartly decorated with an intricate hexagonal art installation, but it was messy, with belongings strewn about. Alouah was sitting in one of the rooms with what appeared to be a maid. She said hello and apologized for the state of the place. Power, playing the part of a luxury property hunter, sniffed at the air and said nothing. Her partner stood with the agent, pretending he was a hard sell and asking questions about the couple. Why were they leaving? Where were they going? The agent explained that the couple wasn’t getting along and were fighting with the landlord. They wanted more space and ideally a detached home. While they chatted, Power paced the apartment snapping photos. She checked out Mansouri’s desk, the very spot where he had placed hundreds of illicit calls and stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars. It sat against the floor-to-ceiling window with a commanding view of University Avenue that included the Osgoode Hall courts, Queen’s Park and the US Consulate.

Power knew that one of Alouah’s favourite places to spend money was MyTheresa.com, a luxury online retailer based out of Germany, so she headed for Alouah’s walk-in closet, where dozens of high-fashion outfits hung on racks above designer shoes propped up on boxes. She quickly snapped photos. Then she exited the closet and looked for phones, laptops and other electronics they could later copy. She also checked for anything that might jeopardize a covert entry. She noticed a dog crate by the door and searched for its tenant. Was this a nasty Doberman or a docile Maltese? But the dog, the agent explained, was out with the dog walker. Once they had collected all the photos they could, Power, her colleague and the real estate agent left. As they walked through the hotel lobby, the agent pointed at a woman leading an obedient Chow on a leash. He walked them over and introduced them to Tokyo, whose soft head Power leaned down and patted. The walker told Power that the dog was “generally indifferent to people.”

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On a Rosedale side street, a police car pulled in behind the couple. Then RCMP officers emerged from nearby unmarked cars

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In November of 2023, Mansouri, Alouah and their children travelled to Montreal, Tokyo in tow, to visit family. It was the perfect opportunity. Around 10 p.m. on November 4, once they had confirmation that the family had arrived in Quebec, a team of six undercover officers entered the unit, aided by Shangri-La staff members who had to abide by the terms of the warrant. Working in the dark to avoid rousing suspicion, their tech team accessed and copied laptops, phones and other devices. By 4 a.m., they were done. They put everything back as it had been and left.

Later, at the RCMP offices in Milton, analysts pored over what they had found. Fraudulent documents, fake passports, templates for make-your-own hydro bills, bank account statements and reams of documents containing other people’s information. Mansouri had registered dozens of websites that mimicked real banks with some characters changed—royalrbcbank.com instead of rbcroyalbank.com, for instance. It was an investigative treasure trove, and it helped the analysts trace the money to its various destinations. If he didn’t spend the funds directly, on clothes or tickets to sporting events and concerts, Mansouri usually routed it to online casinos like LeoVegas or Triple 8, which would effectively wash the money and obscure its source. He would gamble a little bit, which the casinos require to help them comply with anti-money-­laundering rules, and eventually withdraw the remainder into a web of online bank accounts, all created under various aliases. To do that, Mansouri purchased real identities through Telegram and used forged documents—hydro bills, passports, driver’s licences—to support his credentials. The money would flow from one company to the next and eventually wind up in their personal accounts at Desjardins Bank, among others.

The RCMP had amassed a damning pile of evidence: IP addresses and phone numbers, a list of targets that matched the iSpoof data, audio of Mansouri committing fraud that matched his voice, and abundant proof of the proceeds of crime. The warrant permitted one more entry, an opportunity to make the case bulletproof. The condo was still up for rent, so in November of 2024, Power sent in a new officer, this one a man from the RCMP who could pass for Middle Eastern. Because he was an undercover operative (and not simply a plainclothes officer like Power), the rules of engagement allowed for him to interact with the suspects. When the man entered, Mansouri was there. The undercover officer introduced himself and laid on the charm. The two men began talking amiably, the officer explaining that he was coming from overseas with “Saudi money” and was looking for like-minded people. He wanted to know about local schools for his kids, and Mansouri was happy to help with all of it. They exchanged numbers and were soon chatting like old pals at Coco Espresso Bar in Yorkville. When they met up again for dinner, the operator asked for advice on how to wash his money, and Mansouri was eager to assist. He had a local launderer, he said; the key was shell companies, and he could help set them up. Or, even better, leave it to him. If the operator gave him crypto, Mansouri said, he’d give him back clean cash.

The condo was too small, and the marriage was showing cracks. Mansouri and Alouah were looking for a detached home, and they soon found it in Rosedale, on Castle Frank Crescent. Their neighbours noticed that the new inhabitants rarely showed their faces except to collect the steady stream of packages arriving on their doorstep.

By then, Power was working constant overtime, and the case was perpetually on her mind. Then her world stopped. She discovered a lump in her right breast and knew right away what doctors would later confirm. It was breast cancer, and it had spread to the lymph nodes in her armpit. She underwent surgery but mostly kept the news to herself until later, when it came time for chemotherapy and radiation. Her bosses urged her to take time away, and she reluctantly agreed. Occasionally, her colleagues would surprise her with good news about the case, which would buoy her spirits.

In February of 2025, the disclosure package to the defence was nearly complete. The RCMP decided it was time for the takedown. A surveillance team watched as Mansouri and Alouah loaded the boys into the car, dropped them off at school and headed home. Moments later, on a Rosedale side street, a Toronto police car pulled in behind their car and flashed its lights. But, instead of Toronto police approaching the window, RCMP officers emerged from nearby unmarked cars and flanked the Porsche, then pulled both passengers out and arrested them. Mansouri went quietly and seemed chastened. He quickly turned his mind to his sons, consenting to a social worker caring for them until his mother could arrive from Quebec. Alouah, by contrast, became irate and defiant, arrogantly telling police that she hadn’t done anything wrong and that they would regret what they were doing.

The RCMP entered the Castle Frank house, where they confiscated more than 40 devices, a collection of credit cards, laptops, reams of doctored documents and a magnetic strip reader for forging credit cards. They found SIM cards, USB drives, bundles of cash stuffed into designer handbags. They also seized boots from Fendi, Gucci and Burberry; a Versace bathrobe; a Fendi T-shirt and jacket; jeans and a sweater from Amiri; handbags from Dolce and Gabbana, Prada, Celine, and Fendi; a Casablanca top and sweatpants; and a Rolex Datejust. Like the condo, the house was a mess, and it was obvious that Mansouri and Alouah had been sleeping in separate bedrooms. A neighbour remembers the RCMP vehicles sitting in the driveway as forensic analysts went in and out, methodically cataloguing evidence.

The pair were sent to separate remand centres, and Crown attorneys worked to keep them there. For decades in Canada, the system has been weighted toward granting bail, partly out of compassion and partly due to a lack of space to hold the accused. As a result, bail is almost always granted unless the Crown can demonstrate compelling reasons for it to be denied. (Though this may change: the Carney Liberals recently passed amendments to the Criminal Code that will make it harder for repeat or violent offenders to get bail.) Over a two-day hearing, the Crown held forth. The odds looked long for Mansouri, who didn’t even try for bail. The prosecutor argued that Alouah had a rap sheet for credit card fraud, had defied her earlier bail conditions following the Windsor arrest and was an extreme flight risk.

Alouah, who wasn’t on the tapes, might have gotten bail had she not been disruptive throughout the process. She interjected repeatedly, sometimes tearily, bemoaning her plight and wailing about her need to be with her children. At the end of the first day, the judge announced that she would carry over the proceedings to another day. At that, Alouah snapped, “You’re an idiot.” As Power remembers it, the judge turned to Alouah’s counsel and said, “I believe your client just called me an idiot.” The lawyer replied, “Well, that’s not good for our case.”

Alouah was denied bail. The couple initially intended to fight the charges, but as the prosecution spooled out its evidence, they changed their minds. The Crown had bank records, IP addresses, the contents of their laptops and phones, audio recordings of the frauds, a trail of bank records, video and photography from inside the apartment, Mansouri on tape speaking about money laundering, the receipts from MyTheresa.com, and their Windsor charges. Plus, thanks to Mansouri and Alouah’s propensity for over­sharing on social media, the Crown could present a picture of affluence without the legitimate means to support it.

On July 10, 2025, both pleaded guilty to fraud, money laundering and possession of the proceeds of crime. When that happened, Power, whose cancer was in remission, says she finally slept well for the first time in months. Mansouri and Alouah forfeited a condo in Montreal that Mansouri owned. He received four years and nine months; she got two years and nine months. The penalties were relatively minor, but in Canada this is often the case for non-violent crimes. They were granted a request to be incarcerated close to their boys, who were by then under the care of their grand­parents. At the time of writing, Alouah had been granted day parole. Mansouri has no legitimate status in Canada and is the subject of a deportation order, but because he has two children born here, his case is unresolved. The government is also assessing whether Mansouri’s life would be endangered if he returned to Algeria. Both declined to speak to me for this story.

After the arrest, with additional evidence of the scale of Mansouri and Alouah’s operation, RCMP analysts came away with startling insights. Mansouri had contacted nearly 1,300 victims. The couple had stolen $1.8 million over four years, starting in 2020, and had spent $2.1 million, which perhaps explains their ongoing problems with their landlords. Those figures reflect only the amounts police could trace. The actual figure is certainly much greater.

Once the prosecution of iSpoof mastermind Tejay Fletcher was underway, the Met supplied international agencies around the world with leads like the one for Mansouri and Alouah. All told, 10 million calls had been placed over the course of iSpoof’s existence. The Met distributed leads to the FBI, the United States Secret Service, the Dutch National Police, the Australian Federal Police, Europol and Eurojust, France’s Gendarmerie National, Germany’s Bundekriminalamt, the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau, Belgium’s federal computer crime unit, and law enforcement in Ireland and Ukraine. The combined effort, which they called Operation Elaborate, has led to 180 arrests around the world, and additional related investigations are ongoing. It remains the largest active fraud investigation in London Met history.

Fletcher’s lawyers made the case that he was remorseful and explained that he came from an impoverished background and had battled depression and anxiety all his life. He regretted his actions and pleaded for compassion, but the judge was unmoved. “The late expression of remorse is regret for being caught rather than empathy for your victims,” she said. The verdict: 13 years.

Next, the Met turned its attention to the victims of Fletcher’s grand scheme. In a post on its website, the force explained that it would attempt to get in touch with roughly 70,000 UK residents who had been targeted by iSpoof, some of whom were still unaware that they had been conned. The method for getting in touch: text message. The irony was not lost on the police, who took the awkward step of warning that opportunistic criminals may take advantage of the situation by impersonating the Met. “They may also try to persuade you to call fake phone numbers or visit counterfeit websites, where they can attempt to steal personal information and bank login information,” they said. “If you’re contacted in this way—stop. It’s a scam.”

This story appears in the August 2026 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe, click here. To purchase single issues, click here.