Notice of Violation: Marc-Anthony Younes

File No.: PDR 9110-2019-00516

To: Marc-Anthony Younes

Issue Date of Notice: 17 January 2022

Penalty: $50,000

Summary of investigation

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is responsible for the administration of sections 6 to 46 of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (the Act^{Footnote 1}), and the CRTC staff investigates potential violations pursuant to the Act.

The CRTC began an investigation into the Canadian Headquarters marketplace and its administrator in January 2019, for apparent non-compliance with sections 6 and 9 of the Act.

The Canadian Headquarters was an online in which spamming services, phishing kits, stolen credentials and access to compromised computers, which could be used to engage in a variety of malicious activities.

Paragraph 6(1)(a) of the Act states that it is prohibited to send or cause or permit to be sent to an electronic address a commercial electronic message (CEM) unless the person to whom the message is sent has consented to receiving it, whether the consent is express or implied.

The designated person identified Marc-Anthony Younes as a vendor on the Canadian Headquarters marketplace under the usernames Cashout00 and Masteratm.

Pursuant to section 22 of the Act, a notice of violation was served on Marc-Anthony Younes for committing one violation of paragraph 6(1)(a) of the Act in relation to The Canadian Headquarters.

Specifically, Marc-Anthony Younes sent, caused and/or permitted to be sent to electronic addresses, between October 23, 2018, and December 3, 2020, inclusively, 18,435 CEMs using scam pages hosted at 150 different malicious domains.

In accordance with section 13 of the Act^{Footnote 2}, the person who sends a CEM has the onus of proving that consent was obtained. There was no evidence obtained during the investigation to indicate that Marc-Anthony Younes obtained the necessary consent to send CEMs.

Information and evidence to support this investigation were gathered from multiple sources, including Notices to Produce pursuant to section 17 of the Act and the execution of a warrant pursuant to section 19 of the Act, and provided reasonable grounds to believe that Marc-Anthony Younes contravened paragraph 6(1)(a) of the Act.

Based on the information gathered in the investigation, the Director of the Electronic Commerce Enforcement division issued a Notice of Violation, setting out an administrative monetary penalty of $50,000, to Marc-Anthony Younes.

A person who is served with an NOV has the opportunity to make representations before the Commission with respect to the amount of the penalty or the alleged violations pursuant to sections 24 and 25 of the Act and may further bring an appeal in the Federal Court of Appeal from a decision rendered by the Commission pursuant to section 27 of the Act. As a result, and at this time, the above-mentioned information constitutes allegations made by persons designated by the Commission pursuant to section 14 of the Act.

Date modified:

2022-01-17