The Unknown Person

In April of 2013, following an investigation into a "black money" scam, Toronto Police Services arrested 32-year-old Herman Emmanuel Fankem, a French citizen that had overstayed his visitor's visa and supposedly gotten caught up in an organized crime ring. However, as police began to dive into this man's backstory, they discovered that his passport was a total forgery…

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On September 20th, 2006, an African American man was arrested at a homeless shelter in Toronto, Canada. This man was found with roughly $10 worth of cocaine in his possession, which would have been a rather minor offense... if he had been a Canadian citizen. However, authorities would quickly learn that this was no simple drug offense because this man seemed to be a foreign national.

The man's American passport said that he was Andrea Jerome Walker, a man born on January 22nd, 1973 in Wilmington, Delaware. A search of customs records revealed that he had entered Canada about a year prior; having arrived on an Amtrak train from New York in April of 2005. While he was only supposed to have stayed in Canada for nine days, he had clearly exceeded that timeframe with his arrest 17 months later. Authorities would later learn that he had been living at a Salvation Army homeless shelter in Toronto until his arrest in September of 2006, and had been loosely involved with several religious groups in the area.

After his arrest, this man - going by the alias of Andrea Walker - met with his lawyer, who encouraged him to plead guilty and accept a short stint in prison before being deported back to the United States. He would follow up on his lawyer's advice and do just that, pleading guilty to drug possession... but this is where things became a bit strange.

An examination of the man's passport said that this man was in his early thirties at the time of his arrest, having been born in 1973. But the man that Canadian authorities were interacting with was much older than that. When questioned, this man claimed that the information on his passport - the legal document he had used to book passage into another country - was simply wrong. He said that someone had made a mistake somewhere in the passport-issuing process and that his year of birth should have been 1963, not 1973. This would cause authorities to begin examining his identity more closely than they would have normally; including U.S. officials, who met with this man in jail to question him about his past. At the same time, they would begin running background checks on "Andrea Jerome Walker," finding nothing about this individual that extended past the year 2001.

Almost immediately, the passport for Andrea Jerome Walker would be revoked, with U.S. authorities believing it to be a fraudulent identity - and them labeling this man as a non-citizen. From here, the investigation to figure out this man's true identity began, with his picture and fingerprints being sent to nations all over the globe: ranging from the Caribbean to further east, in Europe and Africa. Because this man spoke several languages fluently (not only English and French but Spanish), it was hard to determine where this man had originated from. When asked about why he spoke with a non-American accent, he insisted that his mother had been born in Cameroon and that he "learned French and Spanish on the streets (of) New York."

Investigators would learn that this man had obtained his American passport in 2002, having previously attempted to do so a year earlier (2001) but being rejected for a lack of original documents. It seems like he had figured out how to obtain the original documents, but had likely relied upon a fraudulent birth certificate to obtain his passport. After doing so, he had traveled from the U.S. to Spain in 2004 (one year before heading to Canada) but had been deported back for drug offenses (similar to the ones he was now facing in Canada).

Later on, when questioned, this man would claim to be a Haitian-born immigrant named Michael Gee, but would later refute this very claim, insisting that he had never been to Haiti. Fingerprint records were later sent to Haitian authorities and came back as a negative match for anyone in their system, but the name Michael Gee would actually pop up in the American justice system records. A man with this name had been arrested in New York City for drug possession in 1993 and had later served his sentence on Riker's Island.

When questioned, the man detained in a Canadian prison admitted that this was him and that his name was, in fact, Michael Gee... but this identity would prove to be as much of an enigma as his prior identity (Andrea Jerome Walker). This identity, Michael Gee Hearns, had reportedly been born on September 14th, 1966 in Haiti and immigrated to the U.S. at an early age. As had been the case with Andrea Walker, Haitian authorities had no record of Michael Gee Hearns, and this man would later admit that this identity was an homage to the hip-hop artist Master Gee. When asked about the connection, this man stated:

"I love his music, that's why I use his name... I never been in Haiti. I don't even know where Haiti is."

Authorities would spend nearly an entire decade attempting to learn the identity of this man - dubbed the "Man with No Name" by the press - as he either toyed with them or struggled to come to grips with his true identity after years of drug use and unchecked mental illness. In that time, the U.N. Human Rights Council would condemn Canada for detaining this man for more than nine years, despite him having endured his prison sentence long past what he would have been given under the harshest sentencing guidelines. However, Canadian authorities insisted that they were eager to deport the man to wherever he had come from, but with him refusing to cooperate fully (or simply being unable to), they had nowhere to send him. An internal government report read:

"Subject has no family anywhere in the world. There is no one who knows him and no one would be able to vouch for him. He claims to be entirely alone in this world."

One of the steps that authorities had taken early on was to submit the man's fingerprints to Interpol, which came up with eight different identities; all of which were believed to have been numerous aliases for this man over the years. However, one such name - unearthed by an Interpol search in 2010 - came up with a convincing match.

Michael Myogo, born on September 14th, 1959 in the African nation of Cameroon, had previously been arrested in Spain for drug violations as well as resisting arrest and public mischief. When questioned about this identity, the "Man with No Name" would admit that this was him, but that his last name was Mvogo (not Myogo, which he insisted was a typo by Spanish authorities). However, attempts by Canadian authorities to reach out to Cameroon would prove unsuccessful in cementing this identification as truthful, because the Cameroonian government was unable to verify parts of this identity.

It wasn't until March of 2015 that a liaison officer with Canada's Border Services Agency was able to travel to Cameroon, where they began researching the mysterious Michael Mvogo in the area he had supposedly been born in. There, they would unearth a birth certificate stub with the details of his birth, and a family member (uncle) that would confirm certain details of Mvogo's youth. This information would later be compiled in a report, which read:

"Three days of research in rural Cameroon led to the discovery of the birth certificate needed to prove the identity/Cameroonian citizenship of a long-term detention removal case (Mvogo, Michael b. 1959)."

In August of 2015, this "Man with No Name" was finally deported to Cameroon, although Canadian authorities were unable to divulge any specific details. This would bring this issue to an end after nearly a decade, with Michael Mvogo serving ten years in a Canadian prison for a relatively minor drug offense because he wouldn't divulge his identity to authorities. But by this point, the Canadian government was already dealing with a nearly-identical case, which - unlike Michael Mvogo's identity - remains a mystery today.

This is the story of Herman Emmanuel Fankem, also known as the Unknown Person.

A "black money" scam - also known as a "black dollar" or "wash wash" scam - is a variation of the typical advance fee fraud (which you may know as the "Nigerian prince" scam).

In this scheme, an individual/group will have a large amount of money that needs cleaning... quite literally. They will have a large amount of cash that is covered in oil, dye, powder, or some other concealing substance, to avoid detection by customs or law enforcement. This money will then need to be cleaned in order to become usable currency, which is where the scheme begins.

Those involved will attempt to lure in those that they would be defrauding - those perceived to be gullible - and offer up a cut of the proceeds for a down payment. This money would be used to purchase chemicals needed to clean the money... but would likely be followed up by requests for future payments.

I'll just let Detective Alan Spratt of the Toronto Police Service's Financial Crimes Unit explain it from here.

In April of 2013, the Toronto Police Financial Crimes Unit made an arrest in a case involving a "black money" scam, in which an individual had been duped out of nearly half a million dollars.

The prior October (2012), the victim, in this case, had been contacted by approximately five men, who responded to a real-estate advertisement the victim had placed, in which he was looking to sell a commercial property. The individuals that reached out to him said that they would pay for the property with money that they had coming in from South Africa, which would require cleaning upon arrival, having been covered in a dark powder. For the deal to go through, however, the scammers convinced the victim that he would need to pay for the chemicals needed to clean the cash, which he was told was quite expensive.

Over the next several months, the victim would end up getting sucked further and further into the scheme, giving the scammers approximately $450,000... before learning that the money covered in black dye was nothing but construction paper. Despite losing such a large amount of money, he was faced with the harsh reality that he had been taken in by a scheme as old as humanity itself... and was likely not the only victim of this crime outfit.

This would cause Alan Spratt of Toronto's Financial Crimes Unit to hold a press conference on April 15th, 2013; during which, he asked for other victims to come forward and insisted that the investigation was ongoing. He also spoke briefly about the only arrested suspect so far: a 32-year-old man from Montreal that went by the name of Herman Emmanuel Fankem, who had been arrested approximately one week prior (April 9th) and had been charged with one count of fraud over $5,000.

The man arrested by Canadian authorities in April of 2013 was learned to have arrived in Canada on October 28th, 2012. Having arrived on a flight from Cuba, this man had provided customs with a French passport with the name Herman Emmanuel Fankem.

Explaining his visit, this man told customs officials that he was going to be in town for his friend's sister's wake, and provided plans to stay at a Days Inn in Montreal as well as proof of his return plane ticket to Cuba and approximately $3,000 in his bank account. He explained that he was no stranger to Canada - having visited once more, about six months prior - and had flown back to France about one week before this visit. He was granted a 10-day visitor's visa (meaning he was supposed to have left the country by November 7th), which he had obviously exceeded.

While not much about this man's activities in the six months he was in Canada, he was known to be involved with a group that perpetrated the "black money" scam, who used a rumored connection to South African money to defraud a Toronto-area man out of approximately half-a-million dollars. He was arrested on April 9th, 2013 while staying at a hotel in Toronto under a different name. Following his arrest, he told police that his passport was at his apartment in Montreal, and was later charged with two counts of fraud and personation. None of his accomplices would ever be caught, so the exact details of this criminal organization remain unknown to the public.

It's been reported by several outlets, including the National Post, that this man was very civil with law enforcement following his arrest. This is when the man believed he was going to be quickly deported to France, to serve out his sentence there. When questioned, he insisted that he was a French citizen and didn't have citizenship in another nation, despite him constantly traveling for work, stating at his first court appearance

"I am French, but I work in England."

In this first court hearing (August 22nd, 2013), the man would demand to face a trial there in Canada, instead of being deported overseas to stand trial there. This would become the first demand of many, with the man seeming to prefer remaining in Canada instead of having his citizenship or backstory explored any further. He would also begin to complain about the duration of time he had already spent incarcerated - just four months - unaware of just how long he would end up spending in Canadian prisons.

Because, as it turns out, the identity that this man had been operating under was a complete fake. His entire identity - down to the French passport he used to enter Canada - was based on fraudulent information. Canadian authorities wouldn't learn about this deception until he was already in their custody... and at that point, he was now their problem to deal with.

The man calling himself Herman Emmanuel Fankem would end up being sent to stay at a maximum-security prison in Ontario while authorities probed his backstory; not only for known criminal connections but gaps in his past. In the meantime, his original charges - which were temporarily stayed until his identity could be confirmed - would eventually be dropped to allow for quick deportation.

This man would appear in front of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board several times, and would consistently refuse to divulge any information about himself. He would even refuse to cooperate with authorities attempting to learn about his past; more often than not, appearing combative with public officials (and telling them to "go fuck" themselves). He appears to have adopted this abrasive edge to his personality after being told that he wasn't being deported to France because his passport was not being accepted... knowing, at this point, that his long-term ruse was up.

In a April 2017 appearance with the Immigration and Refugee Board, which was being held through a video feed from the Lindsay, Ontario prison he was being held in, this man reportedly told the adjudicator to "go to hell" and refused to answer any questions. When asked whether or not the adjudicator was speaking to the correct person, he answered:

"I don't care."

And when the adjudicator formally began the proceeding, the man stated:

"I don't care what you do, you can go to hell. That's all I have to say to you. Go to hell."

The man would then go storming off in the middle of the hearing, much to the confusion of the adjudicator and other officials present. This has become one of his many regular behaviors, however, with him refusing to even attend several of his court hearings, even though they are similarly being held via video feed. On the off-chance that he does attend, he is known for being just as combative as I just described (if not more so).

Despite attempting to speak to French authorities several times, this man would refuse to meet with them when the opportunity finally presented itself, for reasons that are still unknown. The man would continue to insist that he was a French citizen named Herman Emmanuel Fankem, despite French authorities stating that this was a fake identity. He did, however, have some kind of a record in France, at least.

In October of 2013, authorities from Paris told the Canadian government that this man had attempted to obtain legal documents through illegitimate means; having attempted to use a fake birth certificate to obtain ID cards and other necessary travel documents. However, the names and dates from the birth certificate did not match up with anyone in French records, meaning that this was likely a persona that had been concocted out of thin air.

That being said, the name that this man was using - Herman Emmanuel Fankem - had links to a prior criminal ring operating out of France, which had been selling fake passports for approximately 750 euros each. An investigation by French police had led to the arrest of the man who created the passport, as well as a man using it while attempting to fly to Canada... but the latter was unfortunately released without seeing any charges. It's believed this might have been the same man, using the same identity and/or passport to eventually smuggle his way into Canada through Cuba.

In 2014, the Canadian Border Services Agency (who had been tasked with finding this man's identity and deporting him) was told by the French government that this man was likely from the African nation of Cameroon, seeing as he didn't have any kind of legitimate record in France.

Two years later (2016), an investigator from Cameroon was able to link this mysterious individual to a specific area, using pictures of the man and showing them around to locals until he found someone that allegedly knew him. This person claims that the man in question (who had since earned the identifier "The Unknown Person") was a clothing vendor in Cameroon, that had eventually moved away to the United Kingdom.

U.K. government services would provide their information about the man to Canada's Border Service Agency, including fingerprints for a man named Bouon Emmanuel Febile: a Cameroonian that was interviewed by British immigration agents in 2007 and was allowed to travel through England. According to this man at the time, he did not want to stay in the U.K. and purchased an airline ticket to Canada. However, he appears to have stayed in the country for some time, because he was soon arrested for a couple of offenses, including possession of fraudulent documents (which earned him eight months incarceration) and then again, for frauds committed under a different name in 2009 (which earned him an additional twelve months in prison.

Afterward, this man seems to have finally made his way to Canada, although his route to get there is clouded in mystery (it's not publicly known whether he was deported to France beforehand or not). He eventually made his way to Canada through Cuba, but his fingerprints would be matched up to a few other IDs from Britain: including another citizen from Cameroon, a man from Haiti, and another unknown man of undetermined origin.

Because of this, many believe that Cameroon is the most likely location that this man came from. Not only is it a predominantly French-speaking nation, but it also appears to be where this man's first identities hailed from (including Bouon Emmanuel Febile, which many believe might be this man's real name). However, because of the uncertainty surrounding this story, it's just as likely that he hailed from any of the other French-speaking nations in Africa, including Tunisia, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Morocco, and Algeria, among others.

In the years since the Unknown Person was apprehended by Canadian authorities, some have speculated that he would rather stay there - in a Canadian prison - than go back to wherever he came from. While this is just a theory, it would explain why he has been so belligerent and uncooperative with authorities, providing them with close to no usable information in almost a decade (despite remaining in a maximum-security prison for a majority of that time).

Because of his rumored ties to Cameroon, as well as the fact that his trail seems to have picked up in the mid-2000s, he might have been attempting to flee the northern section of the country at around the same time that the terrorist group Boko Haram came to prominence. Perhaps he fears being sent back, having alienated certain people there that might mean to do him harm.

It is also possible - based on what we already know about him - that this man might have had involvement in a larger criminal organization from the region. We know that he had at least two accomplices for the scheme he was carrying out in Canada, both of whom were reportedly never captured by law enforcement. Perhaps they had fled with what money they had managed to obtain through their fraudulent enterprise but may hold the Unknown Person responsible for foiling their plans to make off with even greater riches. Maybe this man fears retaliation by this group for getting arrested, and putting hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of dollars at risk of being lost.

During my research for this episode, I learned a little bit about the Black Axe Group, a fraternal order of criminals from Nigeria who have defrauded millions of dollars from people throughout North America (including several victims in Canada, similar to the Toronto man that the Unknown Person and his associates ripped off). While the vast majority of the Black Axe Group's members are Nigerian, the organization is a "death cult" - to whom members literally swear a blood oath - which has been spreading outside of Nigeria over the past several years. In the past fifteen years, in particular, they have spread to include several chapters in North America, and have been linked to several murders and rapes in that span (not only atrocities committed in Nigeria but even acts of violence carried out in the U.S. and Canada).

While the Black Axe Group is just one of many similar groups, they have become one of the most well-known, as Canadian authorities have come to learn about the group very recently. While members of the group are believed to perpetuate primarily romance scams - preying upon moderately wealthy widows and the like - their existence has only come to light over the past few years, with Canadian and American authorities learning about the group's existence through numerous other fraud investigations. It's currently believed that the Black Axe Group has been active since 2005 or so; a timeline that happens to correlate to when this man started to appear in the international record.

While I think that there is something to this potential link to a larger, organized crime ring - which may make the Unknown Person afraid to be deported, for fear of reprisal or punishment of some kind - it's also possible that he just doesn't want to spend time in a Cameroonian prison (since most of the evidence points to this man coming from Cameroon). If this man is to be deported anywhere in the world, the odds are likely that he would be sent there to serve his prison time, and prisons in Cameroon are notoriously terrible: having an obscene occupancy level that makes American prisons look hospitable, in comparison.

However, it's also possible - as was the case with Michael Mvogo, the Cameroonian man I detailed in the episode introduction - that something like mental illness might be in play here. Perhaps this man doesn't fully comprehend the situation that he is in, and would rather stay in prison than cooperate with authorities; with him insisting over the years that he has been "kidnapped" by the Canadian government.

Over the years, the Canadian government has made several attempts to reach out to other nations in their question to determine the Unknown Person's nation of origin. While they have failed to do that so far, they have uncovered several things that point to a more complicated situation than originally thought. For example, officials in Germany came back with a hit for this man's identity, but an internal note from Canada's Border Service Agency reads:

"We are not permitted to disclose it."

While this does seem incredibly vague, it seems to hint at this man's identity having some kind of importance; at least, with it being involved in an active and ongoing investigation (perhaps something tied into a larger immigration or identity fraud case spanning multiple nations). If we allow ourselves to think even larger in scope, our minds begin to wander to something spy-like, with this man's identity being withheld from the public for reasons unknown.

Speculation about what this may mean went into overdrive in 2019, when the Unknown Person was scheduled to appear in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board yet again. Before the hearing, however, this man's lawyers requested that the hearing be closed to the public and the press. As a rule, almost all hearings in front of this board are made open to the public, unless there is a:

"... real and substantial risk to the fairness of the proceeding such that the need to prevent disclosure outweighs the societal interest."

... which there apparently was. At least, enough to make this hearing a closed session.

Regarding this, the Unknown Person's lawyer (Swathi Sekhar) would state:

"... the presence of media at hearings and Mr. Fankem being transported to various locations to accommodate media presence may prove to be overly stressful to him and may lead him to revert to his past practice of non-participation."

It remains unknown why, exactly, these (and subsequent) hearings in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board were made private, as this is only usually done in the most extreme of circumstances. Perhaps it may tie into the Unknown Person's ongoing criminal case; even though charges against him have been dropped, it's possible he faces future crimes and doesn't want to incriminate himself. Or perhaps it ties into a separate ongoing investigation, which may or may not be tied into the lead from Germany that Canadian authorities were unable to disclose to the public.

The courts have ruled that they don't want to create any "additional distress" for this individual or his ongoing case, and fear that public disclosures may be "harmful" to him. For that reason, not much about the man's current situation is publicly known.

To date, the investigation to determine this man's true identity has spanned eleven countries from three separate continents. Investigators have used similar methods from the Michael Mvogo investigation in an attempt to learn this man's name, including investigating tentative links to Cameroon and Haiti. As you've heard throughout this episode, those efforts have been unsuccessful thus far; instead, just revealing a weird and slightly-complicated labyrinth of aliases from multiple countries that this man had used over several years.

Meanwhile, the efforts from his end have been pretty abysmal, with him refusing to attend dozens of detention review hearings and not only appearing combative with authorities but refusing to cooperate and openly mocking the judicial process.

In 2018, a court ordered the Unknown Person to be released from prison - believing that the nation had exceeded its authority by keeping him locked up for so long with no conviction - but an appeal was made and taken up to federal court. There, Judge B. Richard Bell would write:

"During the course of the hearing before me, both counsel observed that this matter is complicated for all concerned. I disagreed. It may be complicated for detention review officers, lawyers, judges and CBSA officials. It appears not to be at all complicated for the Unknown person... This court's impression is that the Unknown Person considers himself to be the director of a play and Canadian authorities are but actors subject to his direction."

Judge Bell believed that releasing the man back into Canada - for him to only disappear among the public, without authorities ever learning his identity - would strain "all sense of logic."

It's believed that an investigation into this unidentified man's identity continues to this day, nearly a decade after his apprehension, but the Canadian government remains tight-lipped about its current status - as well as the status of the man himself. Until such a time that he is finally identified, the story of the Unknown Person will remain unresolved.

Episode Information

Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on on February 21st, 2021

Producers: Roberta Janson, Ben Krokum, Gabriella Bromley, Steven Wilson, Quil Carter, Travis Scsepko, Laura Hannan, Bryan Hall, Damion Moore, Scott Meesey, Amy Hampton, Scott Patzold, Marie Vanglund, Astrid Kneier, Aimee McGregor, Jo Wong, Sara Moscaritolo, Sydney Scotton, Thomas Ahearn, Marion Welsh, Patrick Laakso, Rebecca O'Sullivan, Meadow Landry, Tatum Bautista, Sally Ranford, Kevin McCracken, Ruth Durbin, Michele Watson, Jared Midwood, Teunia Elzinga, Ryan Green, Jacinda C., Stephanie Joyner, and Cherish Brady.