✍️ by Black Sheep Whistleblower
📅 September 7, 2025
🔗 https://blacksheepwhistleblower.com
Stephen Johnston is not who the Alberta government, the RCMP, or the courts want you to think he is. He is painted as a tough, impartial Crown prosecutor — the man who took on the Coutts 3 & 4 – See Coutts 4 below from Donald Best:
In reality, Johnston’s career reads like the playbook of (IN MY EXPERT OPINION and a decade plus of investigations) a white-collar criminal disguised as a crown prosecutor, weaponizing the justice system to shield the powerful while crushing ordinary citizens who dare to resist.
And here’s why I know this.
👉 But first, see a photo of Stephen Johnston — so readers can finally put a face to the name behind this corruption. And honestly, doesn’t he just look like a smug, pathetic little man? He gives me the creeps every time.
🔹 My Window Into Johnston’s World
More than a decade ago, I was pulled into what was supposed to be a criminal investigation into a $100 million mining fraud. But that’s not what it turned out to be. In reality, it was way, way worse — like something straight out of a movie.
Imagine if you mashed together Narcos — the El Chapo Sinaloa Cartel version — The Godfather (“Say hello to my little friend”), and The Wolf of Wall Street (yes, the first scene with DiCaprio snorting blow off a hooker’s ass) — then sprinkled in The Boy Who Cried Wolf (when there really was a wolf) and The Emperor’s New Clothes (the “finest clothes of silk” while he was naked parading down the street), and finally tossed in a couple of books like Without Conscience and Snakes in Suits. That’s about as close as you’ll get.
But I’m not getting into all of that just yet.
This wasn’t just another case in the news — it was personal. I was both a shareholder and a family friend of the perpetrators, living what looked like the dream: a young, early-retired multimillionaire in a multimillion-dollar home, raising the perfect family — the millionaire family with a boy and a girl. Life felt perfect. Until it wasn’t.
We lived in a new community called Morgan’s Rise, once touted as one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Canada, rivaling Mount Royal in Montreal. We were, ironically, the “poor” family in that hood — surrounded by neighbours with full-length indoor swimming pools and even underground bowling alleys.
At the time, I was also a Professional Geologist and a Director of Aston Bay Holdings, a TSX-listed mining company I had co-founded in 2013.
Under the Professional Code of Conduct, I had a duty to “protect the public interest.” So when the RCMP approached me, I reluctantly agreed to help. I was deeply hesitant — I knew the risks — but they promised they could protect my identity. On top of that, they even paid me almost immediately for my work as a confidential informant.
But that protection turned out to be a lie.
🔹 Enter Paul Kavanagh – P.Geo and former Invsetigator at the Alberta Secuities Commission and the TSX.V
On or about September 30, 2014, I received an out-of-the-blue call from Paul Kavanagh, then a senior investigator at the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) and, like me, a Professional Geologist. At that time, we were both members of the same Alberta professional association — the very association that has since destroyed my career and my life, tried multiple times to put me in jail for over a year, and today still has a 25-day jail sentence hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles, courtesy of Justice Branch, if I so much as mention their name in this blog. So I will refrain, for obvious reasons.
But I can say the name of their BC counterpart — EGBC (formerly APEGBC) — all day long. They piled on after Alberta’s regulators took their swing, like two rugby teams mauling the same ball. It was pathetic and astonishing all at once, a living picture of how corrupted these bodies had become.
Paul himself held a Master’s in Geology (MSc), as I did, and he was also a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and member of the ACFE. That was the same designation I would later pursue in 2017, as I began building a business idea I called ForensicGeo — a firm with one employee (me) dedicated to investigating mining and oil and gas frauds. At the time, I was a P.Geo, a member of APEGBC, and an ACFE member working toward my CFE designation. In other words, I was fully legit, qualified, and credentialed to do this work.
And what’s happened since? I’ve been banned from all of it — stripped of my geology license in Alberta and BC, blacklisted from professional associations, and banned for life from the ACFE.
So what does that tell you?
👉 That I’m the criminal?
Yeah, right.
So who was Paul Kavanagh? At the time, he was celebrated in the industry. A February 1, 2011 Alberta Venture magazine feature by Jeff Lewis even described him as a “rock star” investigative geologist. The article, The Not-So-Sneaky Business of Policing Calgary’s Towers, painted Kavanagh as the ASC’s oil and gas sleuth: a veteran geologist turned investigator, combing through corporate disclosures, reserve reports, and flow-test data to expose misleading claims. He had been praised for his role in the 2008 enforcement proceedings against High Plains Energy Inc., where executives were fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for exaggerating production numbers. The piece held him up as central to the ASC’s mission of “sniffing out corporate misbehavior” in Alberta’s energy-heavy capital markets. 👉 See snapshot of that article in Oil Magazine from July 2011.
But for me, Kavanagh wasn’t a glossy magazine profile. He was the man who became my tormentor.
I told him bluntly:
👉 I would not testify.
👉 The ASC themselves admitted they could not protect my identity. I freaked out and told him there was no way I was testifying — these people had hundreds of millions at their disposal and they would destroy my family and me. And that’s exactly what they did, and are still doing to this day — 11 years later, right up to October 4, 2025.
👉 I would be exposed to retaliation with no whistleblower protections.
His response? The very next day, he served me with a subpoena.
Here is a copy of that subpoena (with redactions) — because of course, I don’t want to breach any of the multiple court gag orders (that have gagged me for nearly a decade), or trigger the ASC’s standing threat that if I ever disclosed details of their “confidential investigation,” I could face jail time and fines of up to $4 million.
How’s that for “protection” by the Alberta Securities Commission?
Oh right — the ASC were the criminals.
“How’s that for protection?
Oh right — the ASC were the criminals.”
👉 A bunch of corrupt enforcers using secrecy and intimidation to shield the real criminals.
For those who don’t know what that means — a subpoena is essentially a legal weapon. In this case, it was a piece of paper with Paul Kavanagh’s name and signature on it, ordering me to get myself to Calgary — seven hours away at the time — and testify under oath in the investigation of a $100 million mining fraud. A fraud I was both a shareholder in and a victim of. The choice was simple: testify, or go to jail.
So, of course, I went to Calgary.
When I sat down under oath, the very first thing I was asked was whether I thought this was a fraud. I pushed back and said, “Define fraud.”
Kavanagh answered: “Misrepresentation of the value of a company.”
Based on that definition — his definition — I looked him straight in the eye and said:
👉 “Then this is absolutely, 100% a fraud.”
That was my testimony. That was my truth. And I gave it under threat of jail.
On October 8, 2014, I was forced to appear at the ASC’s Calgary office under threat of jail if I didn’t comply. I had no choice. I was interrogated under oath about the $100M mining fraud, effectively treated as an expert witness — but without protections, without anonymity, and with my family now clearly exposed to the retaliation I had feared.
That retaliation has defined the last 11 years of my life:
- Lawsuits filed against me to pin the fraud on my name.
- Fabricated criminal complaints weaponized by the RCMP.
- Professional complaints filed in Canada and the U.S. to destroy my career.
- A lifetime ban from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).
All of it was designed to silence me — the one person who could blow open what really happened.
The man the media once hailed as a “rock star” became, in my reality, the blunt instrument of a system that chewed me up to protect powerful fraudsters.
Where is Paul Kavanagh today?
And where is Paul Kavanagh today? Gone. Vanished. His disappearance is itself part of the massive cover-up by the RCMP and ASC. But that’s a story I’ll get into later in this Stephen Johnston exposé.
Here’s the kicker: at the time of my ASC interrogation, the RCMP told me explicitly not to disclose that I was working for them. I kept that trust.
Yet a decade later, I would discover the truth — the RCMP, the ASC, and Stephen Johnston were already working together the entire time.
Really let that sink in for a moment:
👉 Stephen Johnston, the infamous Coutts Crown Prosecutor, was the Crown on that $100 million fraud file in 2014/15. He was sitting at the center of the triangle — RCMP, ASC, Crown — not to prosecute the fraud, but to bury it.
And I know this. I have already sworn it in an affidavit. There is no doubt in my mind that Stephen Johnston is a white-collar criminal disguised as a Crown prosecutor. I know it. The ASC investigators who have since vanished know it. And the RCMP — especially the very RCMP I worked with — know it too.
And here’s the truth: nobody is going to sue me or challenge me over this, because they know I have the receipts. They know I know. This isn’t a secret to anyone “in the know.” The only ones kept in the dark were those crucified at Coutts and sent to jail in a political prosecution.
That said, I encourage someone to try and sue me. Because if they do, all I have left is the truth — and they can’t take anything more from me except my life. And frankly, I’m shocked I’m still alive to tell this story. Many connected to this file have vanished or are dead. For me, death has always been a possibility — and probably still is, especially after they read this disclosure. They will freak out.
But here’s the thing: they can’t gag me any more than they already have. They can’t keep using my professional associations to do their dirty work like they’ve been doing for over a decade. So now, we’re at what I call a Mexican standoff. And I mean that literally. But that’s another story for another time.
I didn’t uncover this — that Johnston was working with the ASC and the very RCMP I was reporting to — until June 2024, nearly ten years later but it was the smoking gun no doubt!!
The breakthrough came from a single LinkedIn post by my former RCMP reporting officer, François Courtemanche. On the surface, it was just a career update, but for me it was the smoking gun. That one post tipped me off and finally allowed me to connect the dots.
It confirmed what I had long suspected: Johnston, the RCMP, and the ASC weren’t investigating the fraud to protect the public — they were collaborating to quash it and shield the insiders who stood to benefit.
👉 See the snapshot of that LinkedIn post below — the “smoking gun” that exposed what had been hidden for nearly a decade. (I will explain this post in detail in Part 2)
🔹 Courtemanche’s Slip-Up on linkedIn: The Smoking Gun
What on earth was François Courtemanche thinking when he posted that LinkedIn update in January 2024? Did he really believe that after 10 years I had stopped chasing this corruption? That I had given up on holding the RCMP accountable for allowing white-collar criminals to destroy my life?
Whatever he was thinking, his LinkedIn post became my smoking gun. He clearly got sloppy!!! Either that or he was sending me a message?!?! Who knows!? He knew I was watching his linkedIn profile for years off and on!!
In that post, Courtemanche bragged about his role — alongside others — in cases that dated back to 2015, including a recent ASC decision involving David Del Bianco of Calgary. Del Bianco had just been sentenced to 4.5 years in jail and ordered to pay only $229,138 in restitution, after being convicted of fraud and money laundering in December 2023.
According to the official ASC news release (December 20, 2023), Del Bianco ran a phony investment scheme under the name Equal Rights, which claimed to be a legal services insurance company. In reality, it was nothing more than a scam that defrauded investors of more than half a million dollars. The Court described him as an “utterly remorseless fraudster” who “continued with a scheme he had repeatedly been told was unlawful, causing profound harm to a highly vulnerable set of victims.”
And if you want to get to Stephen Johnston’s name, you have to dig into the court records.
Read the Reasons for Judgment here: R v. Del Bianco, 2023 ABKB 430 (PDF)
And the Sentencing Decision here: R v. Del Bianco, 2023 ABKB 723 (PDF)
Both decisions clearly show Stephen Johnston signing off for the Crown in the Del Bianco case — a case that, not coincidentally, traces back to 2015. That was the exact same time the $100 million mining fraud investigation was underway… and then quietly quashed. (Another story I’ll be covering in later parts of this series.)
For now, here’s a snippet of the record itself, so readers can see with their own eyes.
So why does this matter you might ask?
Because Courtemanche’s LinkedIn post tied this 2023 conviction directly back to the same network from 2015 — RCMP IMET, the ASC, and Crown prosecutors — that had also been handling the $100 million mining fraud file I was pulled into in 2014/15. That case was quashed to protect not just the fraudsters, but the politically connected — including then–Leader of the Opposition Justin Trudeau and newly elected Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.
And it doesn’t stop there. The web also links to relatives of former U.S. Presidents and other international political figures that most people wouldn’t even believe — but I have the receipts.
That’s why the next few parts of this series are going to be epic. Trust me when I say: what you’ve read so far is nothing compared to what’s coming.
And here’s the kicker: Stephen Johnston’s name was buried in that web too. You won’t see it front and center in the ASC press release, but if you follow the ASC lists that Courtemanche himself pointed to, Johnston’s fingerprints are all over it.
That was the moment it all came full circle for me.
Courtemanche’s bragging wasn’t just a casual career update — it was the accidental reveal of the cover-up I had suspected for nearly a decade.
For me, it was confirmation:
👉 Stephen Johnston, the RCMP, and the ASC weren’t protecting the public. They were protecting the insiders.
And Courtemanche handed me the proof himself. #DUMMY #DOLT
…and here’s where the hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore.
David Del Bianco stole just over half a million dollars ($523,832.50) and got 4.5 years in jail. He was labeled an “utterly remorseless fraudster” by the Court — and rightfully so.
“An utterly remorseless fraudster… continued with a scheme he had repeatedly been told was unlawful, causing profound harm to a highly vulnerable set of victims.”
— Justice N.E. Devlin, December 2023 (Del Bianco sentencing decision)
But what about the people I exposed?
👉 They were orchestrating a $100 million mining fraud — not just a paper scam, but one fronting an international cocaine operation with links to Mexican cartels and other organized crime groups around the world.
And what happened?
- They walked free.
- I got the jail time.
- I still have 25 days hanging over my head as I write this — like the Sword of Damocles.
- I lost everything — my homes, my career, my professional standing.
- I was left homeless, blacklisted, and destroyed.
So let me ask: does this make sense to anyone with a sane mind?
And more importantly:
👉 Stephen Johnston — explain to Canadians how this makes sense?!
Why does a fraudster who stole half a million dollars get 4.5 years in prison… while the perpetrators of a $100 million fraud tied to international drug cartels are protected, and the whistleblower gets crucified?
This isn’t justice.
👉 This is corruption — plain and simple.
And I will not stop asking this question until Johnston answers it — not in a courtroom he controls, not through media spin, but in front of the Canadian public who deserve the truth.And let’s take this even further.
Why is it that innocent men at Coutts, who were simply standing up for their freedoms and beliefs, were charged by Stephen Johnston with conspiracy to murder RCMP officers — one of the most serious charges imaginable?
That charge was eventually dropped. Why? Because it was baseless. It was nothing more than a political hammer, wielded to terrorize them and the broader Freedom Convoy movement.
But instead of walking free, those same men were still sentenced to 6.5 years in prison — not for murder, not for terrorism, but for mischief and a string of trumped-up “mischief-plus” charges. Add in some gun allegations. Add in a “bomb” narrative that was explosives from a Belly River sand mine his father owned. Stack it high enough until the weight of the system crushes them.
So let me ask again:
👉 Stephen Johnston — how does this make sense?
Why do fraudsters who steal half a million dollars get 4.5 years…
Why do perpetrators of a $100 million fraud tied to international cartels walk free…
👉 But ordinary Canadians at Coutts get branded as terrorists and thrown in prison for 6.5 years on inflated mischief and gun charges?
This is not justice.
This is prosecution by politics.
This is a system weaponized to silence dissent and protect insiders.
And it has Stephen Johnston’s fingerprints all over it.
🔹 Stephen Johnston: Who He Really Was — A Wolf in the Henhouse
That was my first real window into who Stephen Johnston really is.
In 2024, I learned he was the Crown prosecutor on the Coutts matter — a revelation that hit hard enough on its own. But the bigger shock came just weeks later, in June 2024, when I finally pieced together the full truth:
👉 Johnston had also been working with the RCMP and the ASC on the $100 million mining fraud back in 2014/15 — the very same investigation I had risked everything to support.
It took almost a decade to uncover, but once I did, the pattern was undeniable. Johnston wasn’t just a prosecutor on two separate files, a decade almost exactly apart. He was the common thread tying together both the mining fraud cover-up and the Coutts prosecutions. The criminal common denominator!!
And that’s when it all clicked: the same network of RCMP officers, ASC insiders, and courtroom players that shielded white-collar criminals in 2015 had resurfaced almost ten years later in Lethbridge — this time to stage a political show trial against ordinary Canadians.
That single LinkedIn post by my former RCMP reporting officer, François Courtemanche, allowed me to connect the dots:
- Johnston was working hand-in-glove with the ASC and RCMP on the $100M fraud case.
- The same RCMP officers I reported to.
- The same ASC that had subpoenaed me under threat of jail, with no whistleblower protections and no safeguards for my identity.
The result? The white-collar criminals running the fraud walked free — and my family’s life was destroyed.
Over the last decade, they systematically dismantled my life and career:
- Filed multiple lawsuits against me, pinning their frauds onto my name.
- Lodged fabricated criminal complaints with the RCMP, turning law enforcement into their weapon.
- Filed professional complaints with my regulatory bodies in both the U.S. and Canada, which resulted in me being banned in Alberta and British Columbia from practicing geology — a profession I had built over more than 20 years.
- Destroyed my credibility as an investigator by blocking me from ever becoming a certified fraud and corruption examiner.
- Even secured a lifetime ban from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) — a Texas-based global organization of 100,000 members where I had once proudly belonged.
That gave me a window into Johnston’s world that almost no one else in Canada could ever have had. I saw how he operated long before Coutts, and I saw it from the inside — when nobody outside a handful of RCMP officers even knew it was happening.
And where are those RCMP officers now?
- One has been silenced, likely fired.
- Another has risen to one of the top jobs in Ottawa as an Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP.
🔹 The Coutts Prosecutions: A Political Show Trial
Fast forward nearly a decade later. In Lethbridge, Johnston was the lead Crown on the infamous Coutts trials, pressing charges of conspiracy to murder RCMP officers against four men from the convoy protests.
From the very beginning, this was a political prosecution masquerading as justice:
- Evidence was cherry-picked.
- Exculpatory materials were buried in what became known as the “crime fraud envelope” — sealed evidence that could have changed the outcome but was hidden from the actual Coutts men. Their own lawyers saw it, but the men themselves were kept in the dark. One accused even fired his high-profile lawyer after paying her over half a million dollars in legal fees, because she refused to tell him what was in that envelope. How messed up is that?
- Defence lawyers were muted, silenced, or sidelined — many with connections to major organized crime groups, or effectively owned by the RCMP through family or career ties. In at least one case, a defence lawyer was the son of a retired RCMP officer. These weren’t coincidences. They were carefully chosen lawyers who would never jeopardize their careers — especially with judgeships on the horizon.
This was no ordinary courtroom battle. It was a show trial, directed from above to make examples of the Coutts men while concealing the bigger truths.
For me, watching Johnston lead that charge was chilling — because I had already seen him play the same role before.
🔹 Flashback: The $100 Million Mining Fraud (2014/15)
Back in 2014/2015, I worked as a confidential informant for the RCMP’s Integrated Market Enforcement Team (IMET), exposing details of a massive fraud tied to political and corporate elites.
My reporting officer was François Courtemanche, the same man whose LinkedIn post years later helped me connect Johnston to the entire cover-up.
And who was the Crown prosecutor on that file?
👉 Stephen Johnston.
The ASC subpoenaed me under threat of jail, demanding testimony, while the RCMP instructed me not to disclose I was working for them. Meanwhile, Johnston and the RCMP were already coordinating with the ASC and defence lawyers.
The result?
- The investigation was quashed.
- The fraudsters walked free.
- My life was blown apart as fabricated charges and professional complaints were weaponized against me to shield Johnston’s network.
🔹 The Pattern: From Corporate Crime to Crushing Dissent
The same names and faces from 2014/15 reappeared nearly a decade later in Lethbridge:
- RCMP officers who had stonewalled the mining fraud case.
- Defence lawyers with organized crime ties, RCMP family connections, and judicial ambitions.
- Federal Crowns who circled the wagons to protect Johnston.
Johnston’s career is defined by a single, consistent pattern:
👉 Shield the powerful. Sacrifice the rest.
At Coutts, his job was to criminalize dissent and lock men away as examples — just as he had once buried a $100M fraud to protect white-collar elites.
🔹 🔹 Johnston’s True Legacy IMO — From My View After 10 Years of Investigatingis
Stephen Johnston has built a career not as a minister of justice, but as a:
- Fraud enabler
- Political hitman
- Courtroom manipulator
He is:
- A COVID-era enforcer who wrongfully jailed convoy protesters.
- A mining-fraud gatekeeper who helped quash a $100M investigation.
- A careerist Crown whose loyalties lie with corrupt RCMP, ASC regulators, and the political class in both Alberta and Ottawa.
One thing I can say about Stephen Johnston: he is not stupid. This guy is smart — dangerously smart. The kind of calculating intelligence that often comes packaged with narcissistic sociopaths. God only knows what he would be doing if he wasnt protecting criminals and putting innocent men in jail?!?! Right?!?
“The Coutts prosecutions weren’t about law and order. They were about silencing dissent and hiding a decade of corruption running through Alberta’s justice system.”
Black Sheep Whistleblower
🔹 To conclude part 1:
When you see Stephen Johnston standing in court, remember this:
He’s not the man protecting Canadians from crime.
👉 He’s the man protecting criminals from Canadians.
His fingerprints are all over it:
- The $100M mining fraud cover-up.
- The crime fraud envelope buried during the Coutts trials.
- The network of RCMP, ASC, defence lawyers, and federal Crowns who operate in Alberta’s courts like a cartel.
This is the truth behind Stephen Johnston.
And it’s a truth they never wanted to come out.
But here’s the thing — what you’ve just read is only the beginning.
This is Part 1 of a series, and trust me, this first chapter is pittance compared to what’s coming. The next parts will bring shock and awe to everyone who reads them. Names will be named. Faces will be shown. Photos, documents, and receipts collected over more than a decade of investigations will be laid bare for all to see.
And here’s the irony: I did not want to know any of this. I never asked for it. But through circumstance, betrayal, and survival, I became the most unlikely person to uncover what really happened at Coutts — to connect the dots between a $100M fraud, the RCMP, the ASC, and the Crown prosecutor who turned a political protest into a show trial.
Even the men who stood trial under Johnston knew something wasn’t right. They could feel the system was corrupted. But they couldn’t see the full picture.
Well, I can.
And I will.
So buckle up. This is only Part 1.
👉 Part 2 and beyond will be a wild ride — and nothing will stop the truth from coming out.
Feel free to comment… if you’ve got the guts. 😉
Come at me, Johnston — I dare you. #POS
✍️ Black Sheep Whistleblower
https://blacksheepwhistleblower.com
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