For those of you who don't know me, I go by the name Josh Trousdale, but my real name is Scott Frederick Byers. I was born in a small town, on November 5th 1980, in Kings County, New Brunswick just outside Sussex. I lived a troubled life, with my father leaving me at a very young age to leave my mother to fend for me and my siblings. I began to have problems with authority in Boy Scouts, where my mother caught me stealing something that did not belong to me - and I apologized. I felt abandoned - my first grade teacher Mrs. Brown failed me, and I cried for days. I never had many friends in school - I was fat, and I got picked on all the time. My mother later re-married, and I lived with my stepfather, who owned King TV and Satellite sales. My troubles started to become ever greater troubles, and one day I got in trouble at school for flashing around my dad's credit cards - i though it would give me status and make me feel accepted. By eighth grade, I began to have a keen interest in computers. It is then that I became obsessed with devising schemes to part people with their money. My parents knew I had a problem, and they tried to get me help - the psychiatrist gave me Ritalin for a while, but I got off it, and I remember making mom so mad when I would start missing appointments.
In tenth grade is when I got my first real taste of easy money - I set up a website posing as the New Brunswick Youth Soccer Association where I solicited donations - which brought me a considerable sum of money for a youth - a lot more than I would make working a part-time job. It became a passion, and then when I turned 20, Sony released the Playstation 2 which was in very short supply - and I saw an opportunity to catch some unsuspecting folk - I set up an e-commerce site stating that I had hundreds of Playstations for sale, of which I did not, I started dabbling into identity theft at the time as well - I would advertise for employment, and ask people to give up sensitive information ncluding their social security number, and their date of birth - and I opened a bank account in Florida under the name of one of the identities I stole to hide the proceeds of my crime. Complaints started pouring in, and just before Christmas the RCMP showed up at my parents place armed with a search warrant - my parents were devastated. The story made headline news around the world - CNN, BBC - and I even headlines in the New York Times. I would spend the next few months in and out of jail - I broke the conditions of my bail by stealing a computer from a local business because I wasn't allowed to use a computer anymore - I would spend the next 5 months in Jail. I was sentenced later that year to a long period of house arrest (conditional sentence), and restitution - where I wasn't allowed to have access to a computer. But I didn't give two hoots - I managed to obtain a laptop, and access the internet through the neighbor's wi-fi, while the rest of my family deprived themselves of a computer. I was devising newer, more devious schemes to get money - and all the meanwhile my parents thought I was watching movies, playing video games, or reading books - something I love to do.
Meanwhile the police discovered some child pornography on my computers, which I admit to having. I don't consider myself a sicko or a pervert, but it was rather a way of coping with my missed boyhood - all the other boys had girlfriends, but I could never get turned on sexually, and I knew something was not normal about me - I was gay. I was also turned on by sadomasochistic sex. I had friends that were always much younger than me, because it helped me relive the boyhood I should have had. I was making vast fortunes through my websites, and I was a good speaker, so I could convince just about anyone that their ship has come in - especially teenage boys who see this seemingly successful young man. I tried hard to seek friendship from gay men my age - I attended bath houses in Halifax, and Vancouver.
I would later move to Halifax - I could not stand to be under the watchful eye of of family, because I was up to no good. I started to run a number of companies there - Tenru, Cheapcd's, Inetaccess - I sold non-existent Cd's through one, and bargain computers through the other. Here I started Intelisoft as a springboard to bigger things. Seemingly things began to fall apart - and people around me got wind of what I was made of. It was time I made a move and assume a new identity - Dr. Adam Joshua Trousdale - I moved to Kelowna where I knew someone. I met Alan Robert Gill - a veterinarian who was close to retirement, Jonathan Schindelka - a Kelowna business man, who would later introduce me to Shawn Swail - a Kelowna lawyer. I conned them to invest in Intelisoft - a company that I led everyone to believe would provide Voice-Over-IP telephony, and the pitch was No More Long Distance Bills. I had two other companies - EFG Financial Canada - a company that sells pre-paid credit cards, and Optixx Software - a company that provides voice recognition services. People thought I had it all - I was this young successful entrepreneur in their eyes. I had a number of people working for me - Adam Ostopowich and Luke Worden of which I can remember fondly. But cracks began to appear in my new identity - and I became struck with fear and panic - and I had a break-in staged at my place of business to dispose of evidence.
By now the local media was on to me. Now suddenly everyone knew I was Scott Frederick Byers. I had to make a quick exit from my lakeshore penthouse - I was a cooked goose. I had written up a fake invoice to my business partners for a greatly exaggerated amount for a plastic card printer, which I would later steal from them before leaving Kelowna. I chose Vancouver because it was such a big city where I'd be just another face in the crowd - and I had a constant supply of young lads to recruit from. At this time I knew I had too much money, and I had to find a front to launder my money through - this is where I met a young chap by the name of Matthew Lindhout from 100 mile house. We set up a partnership in a discount/dollar store called Deals Depot in the Kerrisdale district, and things seemed to be going great - but my greed started to get the best of me. I was no longer just laundering money - I was bleeding the store wherever I could - employees went unpaid, suppliers went unpaid, contractors went unpaid - and Matt finally decided he had enough - but he had to declare bankruptcy on account of my actions. I was using the credit card processing machine as a money washing machine - I would transfer funds between scores of credit card accounts, until Moneris became aware of suspected fradulent activity - because the transaction sizes greatly exceeded what Moneris was led to believe - I had set up scores of epassaporte virtual visas through identities I had stolen - which I used to keep the money moving. It was around this time I would get picked up at the Canadian Imperial Bank for a fraudulent cheque - I was into altering the MICR code - using someone else's account, or non-existent or closed accounts - and I was detained until the police arrived. Bad luck strikes twice - I was stopped by police while driving, where a warrant was issued for my arrest by Kelowna RCMP for the actions I committed against former business partners Jonathan Schindelka and Shawn Swail.
As my usual self, I was confident I could weasel my way out of trouble. Fraud was my cocaine - the more I had to do to get the same high. I would go on to commit my largest grossing scam - iPhonenow.ca - iPhones were the hottest commodity, and none were to be had in Canada - at least not legally. I had a large network of teens which would work as my smurfs - taking calls from customers, and placing orders, for devices I had no plan to ship. Sales were coming in left, right, and center - I had it made. My greed got the best of me once again, and now my ego started to take over. Angry customers started complaining, some making their statements public - and I went on the offensive threatening legal action. I made a foolish miscalculation - I could no longer keep things under wraps, and in January police arrested me, and seized my computer equipment - but I have not been charged. My greed continued to mount - I started up a large number of small scams, instead of larger ones - but people found out at every turn - I underestimated the abilities of some people out there. I even went further when the courts would not grant what I wanted - I sent a forged bench order to Google and Livejournal to have blogs belonging to Catherine Christensen, Jose Perreira, and Steven Sinfield, and then I re-registered them under one of my aliases, this fraudatwork one formerly belonging to Catherine, which I employed, and never paid for her services.
I was proven wrong - I've spent the better part of the last year in jail. I know that I still have a lot of skeletons hidden in the closet, that's where I want to come clean. I amassed several million dollars without paying one iota of income tax - something that I will have to deal with. I know that I could be charged at any given moment for defrauding several thousand people through iPhonenow.ca, and I am ready to take full responsibility for my actions, and I apologize to my victims - and if I could do anything to right the wrong I did I would. I know that I have stolen to identities of scores of unsuspecting individuals through employment offers, something else I am willing to take full responsibility for. In prison, I learned that I had a ticking time bomb inside of me - I was diagnosed as being HIV positive - I would engage in high risk behaviors with partners I met at bath houses from time to time - but now they've got me on Truvada and Isentress so I don't develop full blown AIDS in the near future. In closing, despite the fact that I have HIV, and that I now take every day as a gift, I think I still probably deserve 5 years, because if I got any shorter sentence, I don't think I can promise I won't re-offend unless I get help. I feel without prison that I won't be able to access the psychiatric help I need.
From The Heart
Scott Byers
