Crypto

Judge Issues Arrest Warrant for Quebec Cryptocurrency Business Owner in FACTOR Canada Cybertheft Case

Published

6 months ago

January 14, 2026

Judge Issues Arrest Warrant for Quebec Cryptocurrency Business Owner in FACTOR Canada Cybertheft Case

There has been a major development in the FACTOR Canada cybertheft case.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has issued an arrest warrant for Quebec man James Campagna, found in contempt of court after nearly $10 million in music grant funds went missing.

In July 2024, it was reported that $9.8 million was allegedly stolen from the Canadian music non-profit and granting body’s Scotiabank account. In court last Friday (Jan. 9), where Billboard Canada was present, Justice W.D. Black of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that he will endorse a warrant for business owner James Campagna, sentencing him to 30 days in jail.

“I find that Mr. Campagna is a liar, a fraud, and a scofflaw, deliberately and knowingly breaching this court’s orders,” wrote Justice Black in a bombshell Commercial List endorsement dated Jan. 9.

According to court documents, Campagna is the sole shareholder of Vipera, a Quebec-based tech company. The document claims that money was transferred in the form of a counterfeit invoice from FACTOR to Vipera’s Scotiabank account by Campagna, who moved the money into an account owned by cryptocurrency platform VirgoCX Direct.

The funds were transferred out mere days after the Department of Canadian Heritage deposited $14.3-million to distribute to the music industry.

After the case became public, FACTOR released a public statement, claiming that Campagna gained access to the bank account from an IP address that had never previously accessed their banking info. Additionally, the organization noted that it was never flagged about the “highly unusual, suspicious, and illegal activity” by Scotiabank.

The case is one of — if not the biggest — theft cases in the history of the Canadian music industry. Nearly two years into the legal battle, FACTOR’s lawyers have consistently requested that Campagna be held in contempt of court — now it’s finally happening, a rarity in the Commercial List court.

In Friday’s filing, Justice Black writes that “Mr. Campagna has knowingly and intentionally disregarded and/or failed to comply with various orders of this court” including producing documents, correspondence, corporate financial statements and banking information.” Justice Black writes that Campagna has made various excuses to avoid participating, in what he calls “a frustrating ‘the dog ate my homework’ approach to his obligations.”

“Mr. Campagna has lied about various aspects of his conduct and activities in relation to the fraudulent transfer,” he writes. “It is highly likely that he was a knowing and active participant in the fraud, and that he has benefitted and continues to benefit from the proceeds of that fraud.”

According to “FACTOR’s investigations and surveillance,” Campagna has now “fled jurisdiction,” Justice Black reports, and moved to Qatar. That’s according to evidence including social media posts indicating he plans to “stay and work in Qatar for a year” and documents that show his four children have been enrolled in school in the country.

In his endorsement, Justice Black recognizes that Campagna “has taken active steps with a view to putting himself beyond the reach of the court.” Still, “there should therefore be plenty of time, once my order comes to his attention, within which Mr. Campagna can take steps to purge his contempt.”

In a statement to Billboard Canada, FACTOR Canada CEO Meg Symsyk says the ruling is an important development as the organization pursues the repayment of the missing money.

“FACTOR welcomed Justice Black’s ruling this past Friday, which reaffirms what we maintained since the outset: the perpetrators of this theft have not been held to account,’ she says. “The finding of contempt against Mr. James Campagna clearly illustrates the challenges that FACTOR has encountered in working to recover the stolen funds. FACTOR will continue to pursue all available legal avenues to recover these public monies and clear the organization and its staff.”

Scotiabank tells Billboard Canada that they cannot comment, given that the matter is before the courts.

As the legal proceedings continue, the question of penalty and remedy remains open-ended. FACTOR has made its stance clear, as they hope to recoup the almost $10 million in lost funds. In addition to seeking contempt from Campagna, the non-profit is putting legal pressure on Scotiabank, which they said in 2024 has “participated reluctantly, and in the most limited fashion” during the initial investigations.

FACTOR has said that Scotiabank “has acknowledged it has never reported this financial crime to law enforcement” and that despite an issued money transfer of $9,772,875.33, over 300 times larger than any previously made from the account, there were “no alerts to FACTOR of this highly unusual, suspicious, and illegal activity.”

FACTOR is one of the country’s most significant investors in the development, financing and support of Canadian music. Many in the music industry have been watching this case carefully.

Related Topics:factor ontario superior court of justice

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Crypto

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

Published

10 hours ago

July 7, 2026

Press Room

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$35B

Day’s Range

$96.97 – $102.19

52wk Range

$81.81 – $457.22

Volume

248.6K

Avg Vol

21.3M

Gross Margin

68.11%

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

Crypto

An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Published

20 hours ago

July 7, 2026

Press Room

An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

Crypto

U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Published

1 day ago

July 6, 2026

Press Room

U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Cryptocurrency exchanges believed to be financing Russia’s war in Ukraine have been sanctioned by the U.K. government in the first attempt to prevent evasion via “dark networks.” The move indicates a new focus on digital sanctions evasion, and compliance teams should expect these rules to develop further, potentially in the EU and other jurisdictions.

Ruth Prickett graduated from Cambridge University with a BA hons in History and has specialized in business and finance journalism for the past 20 years. She was editor of Financial Management, the magazine…
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