Article content

An unemployed computer techie who sent police on “a wild goose chase” by fabricating evidence of a plot to attack a nuclear power plant near Toronto has been convicted of committing a terrorist hoax.

Hoping to impress Ontario Power Generation into hiring him, Lloyd Charest claimed he had uncovered floor plans of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station embedded in an image of the Koran posted on a jihadist website.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Unemployed techie created fake evidence of terror plot to attack nuclear plant in attempt to get a job, judge says Back to video

A message that “the time was now, it was Allah’s will,” was attached to the Koran image, along with more than 1,000 pictures of the nuclear plant. He said he used a process called Frankensteining to crack the terrorists’ secret files.

One might wonder why a person would do such an act

But in a decision handed down Aug. 15, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that Charest had created the computer files himself — apparently in the hope of getting a job at OPG, which owns the Pickering plant.

“One might wonder why a person would do such an act,” Justice Bruce Glass wrote. “He had lost a job. He was and is very computer knowledgeable. He had done some work for OPG in the past. This work had been related to computers.