Harassing calls could be spoofed, company says

A case of harassing election phone calls is getting murkier, with a CBC News investigation revealing some of the calls seemingly coming from a call centre contracted by the Liberals.

But call centre owner Mike O'Neill says someone is "spoofing" First Contact's numbers — projecting a fake caller ID — to impersonate his company.

CBC News conducted its own experiment and found dozens of online companies and services that allow users to creat bogus caller IDs and faked display phone numbers. It takes just seconds and can be done for just pennies per call. 

CBC News reported Tuesday that voters in nine ridings were getting repeated automated calls, late-night calls or rude phone calls from people saying they were calling from the Liberal Party.

The Liberals insist they are not making the calls. Several candidates have complained their ridings are being targetted to annoy voters and possibly suppress the vote on election day. One candidate blamed the Conservative Party, which denies any involvement and has suggested it's the Liberals' own calling centre making the calls.

CBC has tracked the calls to six numbers, three of which come from First Contact, the company contracted by the Liberals to do legitimate live and automated calling in 100 ridings. 

O'Neill says the calls can't be coming from First Contact, especially the ones with the out-of-country area codes. He says neither the law nor his equipment will allow late-night or repeated calls.

Plus, he says, his records show no calls during the times reported by complainants. O'Neill says all his callers clearly identify themselves, the person on whose behalf they're calling, and even the company name if they're asked.

"Anyone can emulate [our numbers] and anyone can point back at us," O'Neill said.

"Clearly we're coming up on the advanced polls and there's lots of activity out there, so some of it I think is genuine and some of it I think is [not], designed to discourage people from voting."

CBC News has spoken to most of the NDP, Conservative and Green candidates in the ridings where Liberals report complaints and none of them have heard of any harassing or unaccounted for calls.

Joe Volpe, the Liberal candidate in Eglinton Lawrence, has said he's getting complaints about the calls. First Contact is not contracted to make calls on behalf of Volpe's campaign, and people in that area plagued by the calls are reporting a North Dakota number on their call display.

An Internet search on the number traces it back to Minot, N.D., where an automated message plays.

But the mystery deepens on the internet, where scores of people have complained about receiving calls from the number — not about election issues, but about credit card and bank scams.

Police in Minot say they are not aware of the number or its origins. Police Lt. Jason Sundbakken told CBC News it could be a spoof number used by criminals to obscure the true origins of the phone calls.

Another number traces to Colorado, but a call placed to it got a message saying it is not in service.

The Liberals insist they have not hired any U.S. company to make calls on its behalf.

The riding is expected to be a tight race, and O'Neill says the ridings where they're seeing complaints are the ones known to be battlegrounds where two or more candidates seem evenly matched.

Investigation launched

Elections Canada has launched a formal investigation into complaints about the calls by various Liberal candidates in Ontario.

A CBC News investigation has been chasing down numerous complaints from local Liberal campaign offices across Ontario, including Oakville, St. Catharines, Haldimand-Norfolk, Simcoe Grey, Guelph, Eglinton-Lawrence, St. Paul's and Mississauga East-Cooksville. The calls have also happened in Egmont, P.E.I., and St. Boniface, Man. CBC News has not been able to determine who is making the calls.

"If you want to get support for your party, it's not a very good idea to phone people at 2 a.m.," Rae said in Ottawa. "I think everybody understands that. So it's likely to have come from some other party."

Steve MacKinnon, who's running for the party in Gatineau, Que., went further, suggesting the Conservative Party is responsible.

"I haven't experienced anything like that, but it might have a lot to do with the fact that the Conservatives aren't particularly present in the riding of Gatineau," MacKinnon said.

But Conservative spokesman Alykhan Velshi said the party isn't involved, "period."

"The only party with access to the Liberal Party member list is the Liberal Party. Are you certain they aren't making the calls to their members?" he said.

The call targets are not limited to Liberal Party members, however. CBC News has spoken to NDP and Conservative supporters who also got bombarded with calls.

The Liberals have looked into whether it's their own people who are making the calls, said John Mraz, an adviser to the party.

"What they're essentially doing is accusing us of incompetence," Mraz said.

"I find it impossible to believe that campaigns would be unaware of recordings that have been manipulated with their candidates' voices that are being autoblasted out three, four, five times in an evening. We can find no forensic evidence anywhere that any of our service providers have made those calls. And we have checked."

Liberal candidate Bob Speller has said the calls in his Haldimand-Norfolk riding use his voice.

Tactic used in U.S.

Mraz said the calls have been used in the U.S. to suppress the vote. The technique involves angering voters so much they stay home on election day.

"It's absolutely clear to me that my party is not engaged in voter suppression tactics of any sort," Mraz said. "And certainly it's clear to me that we would never repetitively call our supporters or our identified Liberal voters in the middle of the night, four times in an evening, on a Sabbath when we know them to be practising their faith. These calls are very clearly being organized by someone with the intent of suppressing Liberal vote."

Ronald G. Shaiko, senior fellow at Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, says both Democrats and Republicans have both tried the strategy, but it's usually associated with Republicans because lower turn-out tends to benefit that party.

Shaiko says it's likely a third party is responsible for the calls.

"I assume, like the American parties, that there are shadow organizations that are directly aligned with both the Conservatives and the Liberals and that with a straight face the leaders of the two parties could say 'we have noting to do with this'," Shaiko said.

CBC has also contacted most of the Conservative, NDP and Green Party candidates in the ridings reporting the calls, and none of them have had reports of harassing calls from people who say they represent their parties.

The CBC has spoken to dozens of people who reported the rude or repeated automated calls.

'It's absolutely disgusting'

Raymond Simard, the Liberal candidate in St. Boniface, says his campaign first heard about the calls Monday and is looking into it.

"We were door-knocking in some of our buildings, and people had just indicated that we were calling them at the same time," he said. "We said absolutely not. So it is happening, they're calling our offices saying people are being rude with them."

Simard says he asked other candidates about it on a conference call and they believe it's happening in nine ridings.

"Something is going on," he said. "They are targeting ridings they think are vulnerable. It's an organized scam, trying to irritate voters. It's absolutely disgusting."

The campaign is starting to look messy, with signs being defaced and a Liberal supporter charged with stealing a Conservative competitor's signs in Brampton-West, just outside of Toronto. Rachpal Singh Grewal, who says the signs found in his car were planted, has a court date in May.