Three Peel Region officers have been busted in recent years for colluding with the same tow truck driver and accused fraudster, an ongoing Star investigation into police misconduct has found.

One veteran officer wrote fraudulent accident reports for the tow operator as part of a scam that bilked insurers of nearly $1 million. The other two cops tipped the tow truck driver off to the location of crashes using confidential police information.

Wayne Isaacs, a Brampton-based tow truck driver, is at the centre of the web of police misconduct. Isaacs faces his own criminal fraud charges.

The 49-year-old Isaacs said he is just being used by police as a way to get rid of problem officers.

“I’m being railroaded,” he said, sitting outside a Brampton courtroom.

In the past five years, roughly 350 officers from police services in the Greater Toronto Area — Toronto, Peel, York, Halton and Durham — and the Ontario Provincial Police have been disciplined for what their own services call “serious” misconduct.

The Star’s Breaking Badge investigation found the vast majority of officers disciplined for reckless and often criminal behaviours were allowed to continue to be police officers.

“It’s concerning every time an officer does something illegal, unlawful or unethical. When officers are colluding with other people to commit fraud against a member of the community, that’s very concerning, very serious,” Peel police Chief Jennifer Evans said.

“You can see we’ve actually identified this as an issue and we’ve prosecuted these officers.”

The information in this article comes from court records and internal disciplinary decisions.

Tow truck driver Isaacs told the Star that it is common practice on the roads for police to tip off tow trucks about crashes.

“Have I ever been (tipped off about a crash) by an officer? I’ll say yes; I have nothing to lie about,” Isaacs said.

“I’ll tell you right now, I give them nothing — and that would be the truth. But things don’t stop at me. There are body shops out there that make money. If they’re getting smashed cars…” he said, before stopping himself.

“Now you guys can figure out the rest yourself. I do not want to go ahead any further . . . You can go out there right now, and every tow truck driver on the road has one or two or three or four people calling them. That’s all I have to say.”

Veteran Peel police Const. Carlton Watson had known Wayne Isaacs for years, crossing paths as early as the 1990s, as they both worked the roads of Peel Region.

The officer considered the tow truck driver a friend.

Over several months in 2010, Const. Watson provided reports to Isaacs for three crashes that never happened, according to the court decision from Watson’s criminal trial.

The crashes were part of a larger scheme in which people staged or faked collisions in order to file fraudulent insurance claims, including for vehicle damage and physiotherapy. The scam swindled insurance companies of nearly $1 million.

In one case, the court heard that Isaacs gave the names and insurance information for two drivers and eight passengers to Watson “and identified the driver to be found at fault but did not suggest a location for the accident,” according to the court decision.

The tow truck driver testified that he paid $6,000 for each report.

In court, Watson said he was never paid for the reports.

He acknowledged that he wrote the collision reports without attending the scene and relied on Isaacs for details about the supposed vehicle damage and injuries. However, he testified that they were just favours for friends and he thought all the information was accurate.

In February, Watson was convicted of more than 40 criminal charges, including fraud and breach of trust. Isaacs still faces his own fraud charges.

“The witnesses called against him were all admitted fraudsters, some of them high up on the chain of fraudsters,” Watson’s lawyer, Susan von Achten, told the Star.

She said Watson is appealing his conviction.

Tow truck driver Isaacs refused to discuss his dealings with Watson with the Star, saying, “That’s part of my case, and I don’t want to really discuss my case.”

By summer 2010, Isaacs was focusing on relationships he had with other officers, according to internal Peel police disciplinary decisions.

Const. Matthew Pekeski had known the tow truck driver for years. He introduced Isaacs to Christy Clough, a rookie officer Pekeski was supervising and sleeping with.

After arresting Isaacs and going through his phone, internal investigators found both Pekeski and Clough separately fed the tow truck driver information about crashes from their in-car police computers.

“Working?” Const. Pekeski texted Isaacs one late October evening.”Yes,” the tow operator responded.

“Petro gas station 401/queen, 2 car in lot.”

The text was sent seven minutes before a dispatcher had even broadcast the crash to fellow officers.

“Const. Pekeski used his position as a police officer to access confidential information relating to motor vehicle collisions. He subsequently provided this information to Wayne Isaacs, a local tow truck driver, for his advantage,” Supt. Paul Thorne said in his decision to discipline Pekeski.

Pekeski’s lawyer challenged the severity of the misconduct, saying the crashes were public knowledge and Pekeski was merely relaying the information from a confidential system. There is no evidence Pekeski received money for tipping off the tow operator. He told internal investigators he wasn’t aware he was breaking any police policies.

Isaacs, the tow truck driver, told the Star he never received tips about crashes from Pekeski or Clough.

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Pekeski pleaded guilty at a disciplinary hearing and was docked nine days’ pay. Still an officer with Peel, he did not respond to repeated requests from the Star for an interview.

The rookie officer, Clough, received a much harsher penalty.

Once she became pregnant with Pekeski’s child, the work environment turned toxic, she told the Star in an interview. Colleagues at work hissed slurs, calling her a “home wrecker.”

In desperation, she turned to Isaacs for emotional support, her lawyer said in a factum submitted as part of her hearings.

“In fact, she grew too reliant on him, and this ultimately led her down a path to misconduct,” her lawyer said.

What actually happened remains in dispute: At a disciplinary hearing, Clough pleaded guilty to tipping off Isaacs to multiple crashes between December 2010 and March 2011. She was also found guilty of giving the impression she could help get a traffic ticket dropped for one of Isaacs’ associates.

Her lawyer told the hearing that the young officer did nothing to actually have the ticket withdrawn, and there is no evidence she received any money from Isaacs.

However, Clough told the Star she never tipped Isaacs off to any crashes. She alleges the charges were part of an onslaught of trumped-up allegations intended to ruin her career because of her relationship with a “well loved” officer.

“What Peel is putting out there isn’t true. It’s an old boys’ club. It’s selective prosecution,” she said in an interview. “They pick and choose who they are going to put targets on.”

An internal disciplinary hearing also found Clough guilty of deliberately trying to mislead investigators looking into the tow truck case. She had previously been disciplined for misusing confidential police information about her ex-boyfriend’s new partner.

She said she pleaded guilty to tipping off Isaacs because her lawyer advised it was the best way to put this all behind her and get back to the job she loved.

“I lived and breathed policing since I was a little girl,” she said.

“I was a good officer. I’m not a bad person. I’m not out there hurting people, or drunk driving and putting people’s lives at risk.”

She was ordered to resign in seven days or be dismissed.

In disciplining her, Deputy Chief Frank Roselli said her actions “would lead the average person to seriously question Const. Clough’s moral character, and in my opinion the public would view her actions as essentially corrupt.”

Clough appealed the decision, her lawyer arguing that the gulf between the punishment Pekeski received for “exactly the same misconduct … cannot be explained, even when the differences between the two cases are taken into account.”

Her appeal was rejected and, in 2014, she was forced to resign from the service.

Meanwhile, Watson, a convicted fraudster, remains a member of the force — for now.

From when he was arrested, in April 2011, until he was sentenced, on Sept. 14, 2015, to five years in prison, Watson continued to get paid, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was only after he was sentenced that Peel police, under Ontario’s Police Services Act, could suspend the officer without pay.

The force is going after his badge. The next date in his disciplinary matter is scheduled for January.

Contact Jayme Poisson at 416-814-2725