There they were: Slightly more than a month of transactions, meticulously documented as money flowed in and out of the imposter’s account.
There was an initial deposit of $9,372.20 into the imposter’s account on July 21, 2023, followed by a series of e-transfers totalling nearly $4,000 to unknown parties. Then a spending spree, financed by Canadian tax dollars: A cellphone store purchase, lunch at a fast food restaurant, an overnight road trip to Banff, including a purchase at the gondola gift shop and an expensive meal at Earl’s Restaurant.
One month later, there was also an e-transfer of $255 into the imposter’s account from someone named Heidi Germann. Paul would later learn that an imposter had also set up a DC bank account using Heidi Germann’s stolen identity.
For Paul, the bank records were the evidence he needed. He had been nowhere near those locations when that money was spent and could easily prove it.
“That gave me a peace of mind and it proved that I never received those funds,” he told The Fifth Estate.
Excited about his discovery, Paul called H&R Block to tell them what he had learned, hoping it would be the catalyst they needed to complete their investigation.
But Paul’s excitement quickly turned to shock.
“I cannot find you in our system anywhere,” he recalls a customer representative telling him.
Even the reference number they had given him when he first called seemed to have disappeared.
“How is it possible that nobody can find my account? Where did I go?” Paul said. “Where did my information go? Do you people delete these files?”
Months later, Paul sent copies of those DC bank records he had obtained — the ones that mentioned H&R Block — to The Fifth Estate. Journalists then consulted independent money laundering and fraud expert Vanessa Iafolla, principal at Anti-Fraud Intelligence Consulting in Halifax.
