"Billion dollar heist"
a tease from upcoming book three
In 1996, when I am hand-picked from my entry-level file clerk position in Edmonton directly to my high-level Systems Analyst position at National Headquarters in Ottawa, I’m not subjected to any new security clearance procedures or interviews. I’m simply handed a new, fully-loaded high-powered top-of-the-line government laptop.
With that, I can casually log into any of the financial mainframes of the four regions of the Government of Canada and take a look around with only a vague, inconclusive electronic trail pointing back to me. (It was the ‘90s.) These mainframes are located strategically across the country. Quebec and Maritimes are served by the massive pay centre in Montreal; Ontario has one in Belleville; Winnipeg serves the three prairie provinces and two northern territories; and Vancouver runs its province.
I, a prairie kid newly arrived at National Headquarters of Computer Systems of the Government of Canada, am blindly thrown the master key to the biggest bank in the country.
Several years previous, when I was a file clerk in Edmonton, we were shown a warbly VHS story of a public servant who did something very bad in the 1980s.
On the midnight shift on every government work day, tens of thousands of Unemployment Insurance cheques would be printed at the four pay centres of Montreal, Belleville, Winnipeg, and Vancouver in gigantic pay-runs, robotically stuffed into envelopes, and deposited into Canada Post the next morning.
This one bad public servant has an ingenious idea. After midnight one night, right before the early-morning pay-run in the Winnipeg pay centre, with a simple coding change, he flips the names and addresses of all the paper cheques to one name and address: his own.
Soon after, in the noisy, cheque-printing production area, everything starts to roll off the presses as usual.
Some time during the night, a worker, casually checking to see everything is mechanically working as it should on the production line, starts to stare at the blur of the cheques being rapidly printed. They fly by far too fast to actually read anything on any one cheque but his keen eye notices every one seems to have the same repetitive pattern in the name and address section.
He stops the printing process — which is a big deal, and which he can get into a shitload of trouble for doing so without good reason — and looks closely at the stalled production line. He is shocked to see every one of the thousands of paper cheques have the same addressee box number.
The bad public servant who changed all the addresses to his own was quickly caught and sent to many years in prison. End of story. The VHS tape stops, the lights come up, and we’re sent back to our cubicles.
Many years later, in the late 1990s in Ottawa, I am babbling about this bizarre story after work on a Friday to my new colleagues in a downtown Ottawa bar, when suddenly we all go silent. We realize we could do that too, but better … and get away with it.
We move to a corner booth and for the next few hours, we half-jokingly devise an elaborate plan. With the new direct-deposit technology, we can avoid the risk of printing paper cheques and their mail-outs: we can electronically divert money to a single bank account anywhere in the world.
With our laptops open and logged into a test mirror of the financial mainframes of the Government of Canada, we code many scenarios of a mass-payment to a single address. The more 100% successful test runs we do, the more it slowly creeps into us that the unthinkable is possible: from our laptops, we could drain the bank of the Government of Canada.
Our master scheme is brilliant in every way except one. None of us know a shady person who can set up a bank account in another country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with Canada. This is where our drunken plan falls to the ground.
On Monday morning, when I meet my colleagues for our coffee break, I jokingly bring up what we babbled about in the bar. Two of them stand up and walk away; the other shushes me with a finger to his lips. They all want our plan, dubbed ‘Pogey Run’, to have never happened.
---
It takes over fifteen years for me to dare bring it up again.
I and a former colleague, both of us out of the federal public service, are reminiscing about our times back in our Ottawa cubicles. I broach the subject and she is silent for a long time. She finally says what we all think: it is so scary because, back in that time and place and that lack of computer security … it was possible.
With that, I can casually log into any of the financial mainframes of the four regions of the Government of Canada and take a look around with only a vague, inconclusive electronic trail pointing back to me. (It was the ‘90s.) These mainframes are located strategically across the country. Quebec and Maritimes are served by the massive pay centre in Montreal; Ontario has one in Belleville; Winnipeg serves the three prairie provinces and two northern territories; and Vancouver runs its province.
I, a prairie kid newly arrived at National Headquarters of Computer Systems of the Government of Canada, am blindly thrown the master key to the biggest bank in the country.
Several years previous, when I was a file clerk in Edmonton, we were shown a warbly VHS story of a public servant who did something very bad in the 1980s.
On the midnight shift on every government work day, tens of thousands of Unemployment Insurance cheques would be printed at the four pay centres of Montreal, Belleville, Winnipeg, and Vancouver in gigantic pay-runs, robotically stuffed into envelopes, and deposited into Canada Post the next morning.
This one bad public servant has an ingenious idea. After midnight one night, right before the early-morning pay-run in the Winnipeg pay centre, with a simple coding change, he flips the names and addresses of all the paper cheques to one name and address: his own.
Soon after, in the noisy, cheque-printing production area, everything starts to roll off the presses as usual.
Some time during the night, a worker, casually checking to see everything is mechanically working as it should on the production line, starts to stare at the blur of the cheques being rapidly printed. They fly by far too fast to actually read anything on any one cheque but his keen eye notices every one seems to have the same repetitive pattern in the name and address section.
He stops the printing process — which is a big deal, and which he can get into a shitload of trouble for doing so without good reason — and looks closely at the stalled production line. He is shocked to see every one of the thousands of paper cheques have the same addressee box number.
The bad public servant who changed all the addresses to his own was quickly caught and sent to many years in prison. End of story. The VHS tape stops, the lights come up, and we’re sent back to our cubicles.
Many years later, in the late 1990s in Ottawa, I am babbling about this bizarre story after work on a Friday to my new colleagues in a downtown Ottawa bar, when suddenly we all go silent. We realize we could do that too, but better … and get away with it.
We move to a corner booth and for the next few hours, we half-jokingly devise an elaborate plan. With the new direct-deposit technology, we can avoid the risk of printing paper cheques and their mail-outs: we can electronically divert money to a single bank account anywhere in the world.
With our laptops open and logged into a test mirror of the financial mainframes of the Government of Canada, we code many scenarios of a mass-payment to a single address. The more 100% successful test runs we do, the more it slowly creeps into us that the unthinkable is possible: from our laptops, we could drain the bank of the Government of Canada.
Our master scheme is brilliant in every way except one. None of us know a shady person who can set up a bank account in another country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with Canada. This is where our drunken plan falls to the ground.
On Monday morning, when I meet my colleagues for our coffee break, I jokingly bring up what we babbled about in the bar. Two of them stand up and walk away; the other shushes me with a finger to his lips. They all want our plan, dubbed ‘Pogey Run’, to have never happened.
---
It takes over fifteen years for me to dare bring it up again.
I and a former colleague, both of us out of the federal public service, are reminiscing about our times back in our Ottawa cubicles. I broach the subject and she is silent for a long time. She finally says what we all think: it is so scary because, back in that time and place and that lack of computer security … it was possible.
