{"id":395415,"date":"2026-01-08T05:01:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T05:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/395415\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T05:01:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T05:01:17","slug":"quebec-suspect-arrested-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/395415\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebec suspect arrested in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man wanted Canada-wide in connection with a multimillion-dollar fraud and data theft of Desjardins clients was arrested in Spain, according to Quebec provincial police.<\/p>\n<p>The S\u00fbret\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec says Juan Pablo Serrano, considered among the province\u2019s most wanted fugitives, was arrested Nov. 6, 2025. He remains in custody in Spain.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities say Serrano, a Canadian citizen of Ecuadorean decent, will be extradited to Canada where he will face charges of fraud, identity theft and trafficking in identity information.<\/p>\n<p>The joint operation involved Spanish police, the SQ and Interpol.<\/p>\n<p>A massive Desjardins data breach in 2019 affected 9.7 million clients. Police have said suspects obtained personal information, which was then sold to \u201cmalicious individuals operating several fraud schemes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/montreal.citynews.ca\/2024\/06\/13\/surete-du-quebec-arrest-four-more-in-desjardins-data-breach\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Several suspects were arrested in 2024<\/a> as part of the SQ\u2019s \u201cPortier\u201d investigation, including the alleged architect of the scheme \u2014 a man who worked in the marketing department at the financial institution.<\/p>\n<p>Police allege Serrano, 40, purchased the stolen data and used it for various fraud schemes. He had been wanted since June 2024. The charges against him have not been tested in court.<\/p>\n<p>The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Commission d\u2019acc\u00e8s \u00e0 l\u2019information du Qu\u00e9bec published scathing reports in 2020 that concluded Desjardins failed to show the level of attention required to protect its customers\u2019 data.<\/p>\n<p>The OPC report said Desjardins notified the federal office on May 27, 2019, about a breach involving close to 9.7 million individuals in Canada and internationally. It found that Desjardins had been aware of the security weaknesses that led to the breach, but failed to address them in time.<\/p>\n<p>The breach occurred \u201cover more than a two-year period before Desjardins became aware of it, and then only after the organization had been notified by the police,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013With files from The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man wanted Canada-wide in connection with a multimillion-dollar fraud and data theft of Desjardins clients was arrested&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-395415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}