The piano player: The rise and fall of a 'con man' with many names
It wasn't long after teenager Darko Jovanovich began playing the grand piano in a downtown London, Ontario mall that shoppers started dropping money into his hat.
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It wasn’t long after teenager Darko Jovanovich began playing the grand piano in a downtown London, Ontario mall that shoppers started dropping money into his hat.
Sometimes Jovanovich, 17 at the time, would chat with donors in one of several foreign languages he spoke fluently.
“He would just play and people would come and listen. He would put a hat on the piano and he’d basically busk,” a school friend recalled. “And he played gorgeous . . . just so talented.”
The doctor introduced himself as Dov Jovanovich, spoke with a Yiddish accent and told the couple selling their $899,000 Windsor home he grew up in Israel and New York.
He noticed a baby grand piano in the home and sat down to play.
The real estate agent was astonished.
“This guy could really play. He was concerto class.”
Through the front window of the large stone-front home in a southwest London neighbourhood, a baby grand piano could be seen under a chandelier.
The man in the home welcomed two reporters and told them his name was Ben Barak, a former Israeli soldier turned diamond importer.
“In a previous life, I was a world-class concert pianist. I played at Carnegie Hall. I bought that from Liberace, it was his, from an auction house. I played with the Queen when I was 25 years old at Buckingham Palace, you know? I taught at Juilliard for six months in New York.”
He sat down and played. His fingers flew over the keyboards and music filled the air.
But his true talent was storytelling. He was a maestro. He began each composition with a few simple facts, upon which he layered notes of gossip and conjecture, ran back and forth across the always growing melody, building an opus breathtaking to hear, but impossible to clearly remember.
Ben Barak, Aharon Barak, Dov Jovanovich, Benjamin Zev, Chris Harling and even once, Pablo – by many names the man has played, or is accused of playing, people for money and, it seems, for the simple thrill of it.
“A con man extraordinaire” is how one judge described him.
Darko Lee Jovanovich, his real name, has always found a new place to hide and play, until the most fertile ground for falsehoods – social media – exposed him to the world a few months ago.
Rebranding himself as Benjamin Zev, a former United States Department of Justice official now living in Canada, on the social media site X, Jovanovich managed to build an impressive network of lawyers, entrepreneurs, journalists and government officials on X.
Jovanovich’s rise on the platform formerly known as Twitter peaked in December when he co-hosted the largest-ever live event on X, featuring company owner Elon Musk, influencer Andrew Tate, broadcaster Alex Jones and other influential right-wing figures.
But less than two weeks later, Jovanovich’s true identity – along with his criminal past and long history of deceptions – was exposed on X, capturing the attention of far-right figures including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and conservative political activist Laura Loomer.
Speculation and rumours swirled about how a con man from London ended up sharing a digital stage with so many rich and powerful people.
Since meeting him in 2017, two London Free Press reporters have followed his adventures, and with legal action by his biggest victim complete, there is a story to tell now.
Darko Jovanovich could probably tell this story better than anyone.
But he has refused multiple requests over the past two months to speak to The London Free Press.
Not that his version of events could be trusted.
![Darko Jovanovich](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Title.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=wQ1vDULaI0Cboj5HU5T0Zg)
‘PABLO’
Darko Jovanovich’s penchant for using different names and touting his intelligence began early.
At Rick Hansen elementary school in London, he alienated most other pupils with his “air of superiority,” one of his few friends recalls.
“He was a pariah at public school and that’s probably why we were friends,” said the woman, who asked not to be named. “We were losers together.”
The two often hung out at Jovanovich’s small south-end home, where he’d boss around his mother but show respect to his grandmother, the woman said.
Jovanovich said his family was from Yugoslavia, the former republic made up of several Balkan countries.
“But he didn’t like to talk about his background,” she said.
Jovanovich had a dark side, spoke terribly about his friends and often mocked Muslims and Catholics, the woman said.
“He was so brash behind someone’s back.”
The woman described a strange night in high school when she said Jovanovich tried to persuade her that his first name wasn’t Darko.
“He sat there and tried to convince me his name was Pablo. . . . Maybe he was just trying to see if he could convince me that his name was not Darko.”
Lorna McKenzie was a student at London’s Sir Wilfrid Laurier secondary school in the late 1990s when through friends she met Jovanovich, a student at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic secondary school, across town.
Sometimes they’d skip class to hang out on a second-floor food court of the downtown London mall where Jovanovich would play the piano.
The two teens bonded over a shared love of the occult.
“All he wanted to do was play Ouija board,” McKenzie said.
An interest in supernatural powers and practices once took them to a cemetery in the middle of the night to summon the spirits.
Jovanovich spread his Jewish prayer cloth on the ground and they began playing Ouija before a mysterious noise – perhaps a fish jumping in the pond or a tree branch falling – sent them running off screaming into the night, McKenzie said with a laugh.
She said Jovanovich told her his father was a judge.
“He kind of gave me the impression that dad was off doing his thing and he didn’t really care about the family anymore,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie, now 41, said she lost touch with Jovanovich after high school.
From 2001-05, Jovanovich was registered at King’s University College, an affiliate of London’s Western University, but was deemed “ineligible to graduate,” school officials there said.
McKenzie saw Jovanovich years later when she was working at Wal-Mart. He told her he was back in London doing his medical residency at University Hospital.
“He was telling me that he was going to the University of Windsor to be an oncologist,” she said. “I believed him at the time – I had no reason not to, right?”
‘DR. JOVANOVICH’
Concern and compassion coloured everything the good Dr. Jovanovich did in Windsor, Ont.
For a family with a sick child, he pre-paid treatment at an American hospital.
For one patient, he talked a hospital into providing an emergency MRI.
His behaviour was only fitting for someone claiming to be the grandson of Dr. Lazar Jovanovic, a hero in Windsor’s Italian community who died in 2004, and whose 50 years of service was marked with a 10-metre memorial clock tower.
The younger Dr. Jovanovich’s service was marked by a trial for assault and fraud.
Testimony from that trial, reporting from the Windsor Star at the time, and more recent Free Press interviews, revealed how Jovanovich roamed the city as a pediatric neurosurgeon with privileges at a Detroit hospital, dispensing advice and lies in equal measure.
He stepped into the life of Slobodan Djuric in early 2013, after overhearing Djuric speak Serbian in a restaurant and engaging him in conversation in the language.
Djuric installed windows and doors. My father owns the Fabricland chain and apartment buildings and I can send business your way, Jovanovich told him.
Over the next few months, Djuric had Jovanovich over for dinner, coffee and drinks.
One night Djuric fell ill and Jovanovich took him to Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital, where he convinced staff he was a doctor and got Djuric a speedy MRI.
Later, Jovanovich’s beloved father died and he needed $170,000 to send the body back to Serbia for burial.
Djuric said he lent Jovanovich $6,500, which he never saw again.
Jovanovich also took $835 from one man with chronic pain by promising to get a medical marijuana prescription.
Whenever an opportunity opened, Jovanovich sidled in. He examined a nine-year-old girl with a neurological disorder in her home, later presenting bogus documents showing he’d scheduled an MRI in Detroit before laser surgery for a lesion on her brain could take place in Chicago.
Jovanovich told them he’d already paid for the surgery, and would take the $58,000 fee over five years, getting them to sign a contract.
As befits a life-saving neurosurgeon, Jovanovich needed a nice home. Realtor Rhys Trenhaile took him to an $899,000 house for sale, where they met the Jewish owners.
![James Heugh](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/25-james.jpg?location=half_width_left&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=wneLb56RlcBuCBSMDa7E-A)
In a Yiddish accent, Jovanovich convinced the couple he had grown up in Israel and had lived in New York, Trenhaile said. When he sat down and played their baby grand piano, all his stories seemed real.
He and the real estate agent went to a bar, where Jovanovich slapped $100 bills on the table to pay for drinks.
They happened across the realtor’s personal trainer, James Heugh, and soon Jovanovich signed up for sessions.
During the sessions, Jovanovich would open up about the stresses endured as a pediatric neurosurgeon with privileges at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital.
He never opened up his wallet, providing excuse after excuse until Heugh was out $480 in session fees.
Eventually, those Jovanovich befriended grew suspicious.
Jovanovich refused to fill out government paper work for a real estate deal, Trenhaile said. “He got angry. It was an insult to him.”
Trenhaile checked a medical registry, saw no mention of the doctor, and called police.
His hands were soft, like a surgeon's. How can a guy like this be such a criminal?
Richard Vennettilli, furniture store owner bilked by 'Dr. Jovanovich'
Furniture store owner Richard Vennettilli said he shipped luxury items to a $500,000 condo Dr. Jovanovich somehow obtained.
“I shook his hand. His hands were soft like a surgeon’s. How can a guy like this be such a criminal?” Vennettilli said.
When the doctor’s cheques bounced, Vennettilli’s brother called police.
By the time of the trial in 2015, 17 people had come forward with complaints about Jovanovich.
Jovanovich pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud, assault and possession of stolen property, involving five victims, including the sick girl he examined, the man seeking medical marijuana and the personal trainer.
He was sentenced to eight months in jail, but with credit for time already served, was out in 40 days. He was ordered to pay $9,683 he took from victims and put on probation for two years.
Jovanovich apologized in court: “I’ve done enough harm. That’s it.”
That was not it, not by a long shot.
![Tony, left, and Richard Vennettilli](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Fraudster.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=CPiKv_3cCENCmqAvM_igcQ)
‘BEN BARAK’
Through the window that dominated the front of the new house, one could see a baby grand piano under a chandelier.
A man led two London Free Press reporters into a stylish modern home, and the start of a barely believable story.
A few days earlier, on Dec. 3, 2017, The London Free Press had published a story about charges against Const. Achille Currado. Court documents revealed the London police officer was charged with releasing information and trying to get a prisoner released, an explosive story.
After the story ran, a man called the newsroom and said he had information. He asked to meet at his home near London’s Lambeth neighbourhood, and could we please bring him a package of Du Maurier cigarettes.
He called himself Ben Barak, smoked the cigarettes in his garage, poured wine in the kitchen and played the piano.
![Darko Jovanovich](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/darko-jovanovich-e1579632899708.jpg?location=half_width_right&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=g5OytTujqWE7QYfbtOeAfg)
When he sat down and played, all his stories seemed possible.
Even this story: The money for the piano and new home came from selling information passed to him by a London police officer to dozens of the city’s leading criminal figures.
A few summers ago, he met then-constable Currado, who was selling a car. They became friends. After learning Currado was unhappy with the London Police Service, the two also became business partners, Barak said.
“He was an auditor, so you can pull up any file, anything. So he will take pictures of the computer screen around town and text them to me and say, give this to that person,” he said.
Barak said the information, much of it valuable police and Crown “plans of attack,” was sold to criminals. Barak said he took a cut.
One outlaw biker leader paid to check the records of five people to see if they were informants, he said.
Another biker paid the police officer $250,000 to get gambling charges thrown out of court, Barak told us.
Twice, Currado got prisoners in police cells out, including one of the most notorious and well-known London criminals, Barak said. Charges against that man disappeared, Barak said.
The police officer also sent drug dealers tips about when raids were going to happen, Barak said.
Over the course of a year and a half, Currado made $3 million and he made $500,000, Barak said.
Barak said some of the payments to Currado were in Bitcoin and some in cash, and he showed some money bands as proof of the money paid in turn to him.
“I have all the Interac e-Transfers, that’s how he sent it to me, $30,000 a month. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but this is exactly what happened.”
He showed on his phone what appeared to be a screenshot of a police computer file.
Barak claimed Currado pulled information on about 4,400 people, sending thousands of texts that he passed on to criminals.
He named a couple of dozen people who allegedly benefited from the arrangement, most of them known to us. He also dropped the names of police officers he claimed were friends.
“I know who’s sleeping with who, who uses excessive force or beats people, who does drugs and who sells drugs and who takes drugs off people.”
Barak liked to gossip, and gather information as he did. He sometimes started a story and pretended to forget a name, waiting for us to fill in the gap. When we brought up rumours, he replied, ‘How did you know that?’ – suggesting he knew the same thing and flattering our investigative skills.
![Achille Currado](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/lfp20190716dr004.jpg?location=half_width_left&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=CbNFORqYW4ZnmrNLORf7Iw)
He told us his grandmother was a linguist and he knew 17 languages. The family had originated in Yugoslavia and lived in Israel. He was a diamond importer.
The deal with Currado fell apart because the police officer ran into some financial problems over a dispute with a partner and needed a quick $500,000, Barak told us.
When Currado came to his house and threatened to put him and his mother in jail, he called police, Barak said.
Even after Currado was charged, the police officer tried to get revenge – telling London jewellers he couldn’t be trusted, Barak said.
“I was doing $100,000 in business a month legitimately with my business. I haven’t sold anything since this happened. Your reputation is everything in the diamond business.”
He worried police would throw him in jail, and telling his story to reporters was his protection, Barak said.
“If they want to silence me, put me in jail, because once you get in jail, I see with these people, if they want you in there, you stay in there. Who’s going to come and speak for me? If anything happens to me, you’re here.”
In return, Barak promised us the texts showing the money-for-information deal and something even better: “the manifesto.”
Currado had created a large document, a manifesto, detailing corruption within the London police force, Barak claimed.
Many of Barak’s stories seemed exaggerated, but some rang true. At the time, several London police officers were facing various criminal charges and rumours swirled about others.
And Barak sure could play that piano.
But there was always a roadblock to getting the proof from Barak – the information was on a cellphone police had locked out, he had to leave London for a few days, he needed to get his finances in order first.
Then he tried to sell us diamonds.
That proposal struck us as particularly amusing – the thought that two reporters had money or lack of sense to buy diamonds off a stranger. We declined the offer.
His texts grew angry. We were abandoning him, we were anti-Semites, he said.
He stopped answering texts. Eventually, we learned about Darko Jovanovich’s time in Windsor.
“Hey, you’ve gone darko on us,” we texted him in July 2018, in an attempt to shake him out of hiding.
“Very original joke,” he texted back.
“You cut quite the path in Windsor,” we texted.
“You’re getting relatively close but no cigar yet. I’m just finishing quick call (sic) can I call you in a few moments.”
“Sounds good,” we texted.
He never called back.
‘AHARON BARAK’
By the end of a two-year-long con at the hands of a man pretending to be several people at once, police Const. Achille Currado was spinning.
Every day, all day, a staccato of texts struck his phone from lawyers running a provincewide probe into police corruption or the key witness in that probe. Questions, complaints, threats, apologies, requests for money, for understanding.
It felt horrible. I felt like a fool, embarrassed as a cop. I can't describe how I felt, depression isn't even the word for it.
Achille Currado, lost about $450,000 over the course of a two-year con
“It was a constant barrage,” Currado recalled during a series of recent interviews with The London Free Press.
There were at least 10,000 pages of texts over two years between Currado and his handlers, his trial later heard.
By the time the con fell apart, Currado had released confidential police information, including addresses of officers, was out $450,000 and about to lose a 20-year career. The account of how Currado was conned is based on findings made at Currado’s trial and an agreed statement of facts presented at the trial. As Jovanovich didn’t testify at the trial and didn’t face charges, the courts didn’t have his side of the story.
According to evidence at Currado’s trial, the con began with an online post about selling a car in the summer of 2015.
At the time, Currado was working as a London police auditor, responsible for reviewing other officers’ reports to ensure they were complete and followed policy.
At the same time, his mother was battling a blood disorder and the side-effects of medication, including an ulcer spreading through her leg.
“I was really stressed over that. I took a leave, ended up being for three, four months from beginning of August to end of December, just to care for my mom in Toronto,” Currado said in an interview.
A man calling himself Aharon Barak showed up to look at the car and began a conversation that turned to commiseration.
I support my own mother, a survivor of the Holocaust. I’m an Israeli engineer working at General Dynamics in London, Currado said Barak told him.
![Darko Jovanovich](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/1-darko-rotated.jpg?location=half_width_left&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=hDdcRkD5Fk6PKUR4PvuHdw)
Barak took him out for drinks, and invited him to his house to meet his mother, Currado said.
“He started doing me like a series of little favours, like he wants to be my buddy.”
Currado said he’s read books since about the psychology of predators and how they target a person’s weakness. “My weakness is my family. So he started working on that.”
London police wanted a doctor’s note for the stress leave, but he was having trouble finding time to get to his doctor’s office because he was in Toronto all week with his mother, Currado said.
So Barak sent him to a doctor he knew in Toronto, who provided the note.
Barak did him another big favour. A few years back, a jealous man posted online falsehoods about Currado cheating on his girlfriend. Barak managed to get that post taken down off a site based overseas.
“I don’t know how he did it. He said it was from his Israeli military days and intelligence work, he knew these guys,” Currado said.
Barak also set up a phone call with well-known Toronto lawyer Julianna Greenspan to represent Currado in a defamation suit against the man who posted on the cheater website.
There is a real Julianna Greenspan, daughter of the late and well-known lawyer Edward Greenspan, and Currado believed he was talking to her at that point because he received an email from her office.
But then Currado started receiving text messages supposedly from her private account.
This Julianna Greenspan – a fake – continued to offer help getting him $300,000 in a defamation lawsuit, and the connections with Barak grew deeper.
Barak promised to help Currado’s brother get a job, he visited Currado’s parents’ house, his mother spent time with Currado’s special needs sister and taught her how to light the menorah.
“He made himself like my brother, because he said he lost his brother and lost his sister in Israel. His mom said, ‘You remind me of my son,'” Currado said.
The stories from Barak grew. He was an ex-agent of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and trained to kill. He was a concert pianist and he proved it by playing for Currado.
Currado shared his stories. He’d grown frustrated with London police brass over what he said were unethical and illegal practices.
“Aharon has got a photographic memory. He takes in everything that you are worried about or interested in. He builds on it,” Currado said in an interview.
Currado said Barak told him he was being pressured by a London business leader, working with senior police officers, to engineer tractor-trailers that could smuggle large amounts of drugs across the border.
You want proof? Look at my phone, he told Currado.
On his phone were texts that appeared to be from accounts with the same names as several senior London police officers, Currado said, showing The London Free Press some of the texts.
A text that appeared to be from Barak’s mother asked Currado to save her son from being targeted by police.
The fake Julianna Greenspan backed up the stories. The Baraks were old family friends, and she was trying to help Aharon, she told Currado.
The fake Greenspan told Currado she had a friend high up in the Ontario Provincial Police who was helping root out the corrupt officers and business leaders pressuring Barak.
“There are these people targeting me to help Aharon because Aharon is a saint,” Currado said.
At first, Barak got angry and pushed back at the idea of his friend getting involved as if “he ‘s trying to protect me,” Currado recalled.
He contacted a friend with the OPP, Det.-Sgt. Jonathan Asen, Currado said.
Asen, who later testified at Currado’s trial, confirmed Currado did approach him about a man who could expose police corruption and a business leader’s involvement.
Barak spun stories about London criminals only police officers could know, Currado said, and it turns out Barak was friends with some. Currado showed The London Free Press reporters several photos of Barak with at least one OPP officer.
“There are always things that lend credibility to his story. But he’s also asking for help from you.”
It didn’t take long for Barak to ask for a small loan or two for this and that, including his mother’s medical bills. He was going through a divorce and his substantial savings were frozen, Barak explained.
Currado began lending him money, and it started to add up, $42,000 alone from August to December 2015, according to court documents.
The fake Greenspan increasingly encouraged Currado to help Barak, and told Currado her uncle, “Brian Greenspan,” was helping in the probe. Sometimes a fake Brian Greenspan texted Currado.
If Barak gave up or left for Israel or died from his health problems, the whole thing would fall apart, the fake Julianna Greenspan told Currado.
“This was way over my head. I’m trying to deal with my mom, I’m back and forth from Toronto. So he knew that I was weak at that time, he knew he could manipulate me,” Currado said.
His own concerns about London police, Barak’s texts from senior officers threatening him, Asen’s police corruption probe, and the involvement of “lawyers” – “When you factor that all together, then I’m like, OK, I’m starting to buy your story,” Currado said.
The fake Greenspan told him Barak was suffering PTSD from his time in the Israeli military, Currado recalled.
In early 2016, the threats started, Currado said.
“He’d say, if you don’t do this, I’ll have this guy come and kill your family. I will come over there and kill your sister in front of your parents.”
Then the fake Greenspan would text and say Barak didn’t mean it, that he was having an episode.
“OK, I’m dealing with a guy who’s mentally unstable,” Currado recalled thinking. “But I can trust the ‘Greenspans,’ I can trust that the case was still the case.”
Currado got a second mortgage on his house and a line of credit. Barak and his mother needed help with medical treatments, with rent, with food sometimes.
In 2016, Currado handed over $266,000 to Barak, in sums as low as $50 and as high as $30,000 through e-transfers, in cash, in gift cards, according to court documents.
“He knew I would do anything to help a friend, especially someone being targeted.”
![Darko Jovanovich](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/darko-12.jpg?location=half_width_right&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=JDoYJqUrA5LWyLZowmTu5g)
Early in 2016, the fake Greenspan began asking Currado for summaries of misdeeds in the London Police Service – one on hiring and promotion practices and one on other wrongdoings.
At one point, Currado mentioned that his father was ill and the fake Greenspan quickly replied that her father died on vacation. Edward Greenspan did die on vacation – another bit of fact thrown into the mix.
In the fall of 2016, Barak and the fake Greenspans began asking for confidential police information about certain London criminal cases.
“It was always tied into Julianna’s case, no matter what it was,” Currado said.
He kept trying to meet “Greenspan,” but there was always a reason she couldn’t make it, Currado said.
Several times it seemed the investigation was coming to an end. Then something went wrong. He was often to blame, Currado said.
“They’re just ready to go, but then I say something to somebody and thwart the whole plan.”
For more than a year, Barak pretended to be the two Greenspans – mostly by text, but sometimes using other people, their identities unknown, to call, Currado said.
“I had some doubts. But there was always something that would kind of put me back on track.”
Or the fake Greenspan would get angry: “If you take any tone with me, you’re going to be in jail yourself. You will be interrogated,” one text tirade began.
With 10,000 texts flying back and forth, a mistake was bound to happen.
On July 8, 2017, Currado got a text from “Julianna Greenspan,” but on Barak’s phone number.
“For some reason, that light bulb moment came on,” Currado said.
His heart sank. What have I done? he thought.
“It felt horrible. I felt like a fool, embarrassed as a cop. I can’t describe how I felt, depression isn’t even the word for it,” Currado recalled. “My head was spinning.”
DARKO JOVANOVICH
One minute after midnight on Valentine’s Day, 2024, Achille Currado allowed himself a small toast with his partner.
The next day, he went out for coffee and did some errands, “just trying to feel normal again,” he said.
Feb. 15, 2024, was the first day in a long time that the former London police constable was legally free.
Currado was charged with obstructing justice, breach of trust, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence in December 2017.
From Nov. 8, 2016, to July 2, 2017, he provided confidential police information eight times to the fake Julianna Greenspan and 26 times to Jovanovich, an agreed statement of facts at his 2019 trial said.
The information included occurrence reports, police witness statements and addresses of some officers, his trial heard.
He also tried twice in July 2017 to get one prisoner released from custody at Jovanovich’s request, the agreed statement said.
![Achille Currado](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/lfp20191216mh007-e1576525166447.jpg?location=half_width_left&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=41HAa0IxD46fH4ZySH9BbQ)
Currado has never disputed what he did. But he argued that he wasn’t guilty because of mens rea, the legal concept that someone must possess a guilty state of mind to commit a crime.
Currado testified he thought he was releasing information at first for the public good and later out of fear from Darko Jovanovich’s threats of violence. The addresses of officers he was keeping for search warrants, Currado said.
At trial’s end, Ontario Justice Robert Rogerson acknowledged Currado became “enmeshed in an elaborate story” from “a master con man,” but ruled the constable was not acting under duress or in the public interest, but out of revenge against London police brass.
In finding Currado was not acting under duress, Justice Rogerson concluded that in “all of the many text messages produced at this trial, there was only one oblique reference to a threat involving the accused’s brother.”
Justice Rogerson’s decision didn’t conclude that Currado was knowingly part of an elaborate scheme in which information would be passed on to criminals, as Jovanovich – calling himself Ben Barak – claimed when he met Free Press reporters in 2017.
London police provided a victim impact statement that said the charges against Currado had damaged the department’s reputation with the public and other police agencies.
The judge found Currado guilty of obstruction of justice and breach of trust, and sentenced him to 15 months of house arrest, but also granted an abuse of process hearing.
The December 2020 hearing focused on two matters: police handling of seized cellphones and the fairness of the London police investigation.
There was evidence the seized cellphones had been turned on while secured in evidence and London police failed to extract 22 audio files for disclosure – files Currado says contained proof of more threats from Jovanovich.
But there was no evidence their actions were intentional or harmed the case, the hearing was told.
More central to the hearing was the potential conflict of interest for London police, which has investigated officers on its own at times and handed over those investigations to other forces at other times.
In this case, “the London police was the complainant, they were the investigators and they were the accused,” Currado’s lawyer said. “That is the London police wearing too many hats. It becomes impossible for them to be impartial.”
Though the OPP took over supervision of the investigation six months after it started, three London officers remained involved, including one as the co-lead investigator, testimony revealed. An OPP officer testified London police had done the bulk of the work by the time the OPP took over.
The investigation was done fairly and there’s nothing London’s lead investigator did that was improper, the Crown argued.
Justice Rogerson ruled in February 2021 there was nothing in the London police investigation that violated the principles of justice or fair play.
A self-described “stubborn Italian,” Currado appealed Rogerson’s decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal.
After a hearing in April 2023, the Appeal Court rejected Currado’s claim of abuse of process, but did say police should carefully consider at times asking another force to investigate its own officers.
Currado had one last chance, an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on the basis that institutional conflict of interest, which can lead to abuse of process, was one of national interest.
The Supreme Court dismissed his application to hear the appeal, without giving reasons, in December 2023.
“I’m glad it’s over,” Currado said. “It’s still hard to deal with. I still have a lot of sleepless nights.”
Suspended with pay since being charged, he resigned in 2020 so he could access his pension for legal bills, Currado says.
Meanwhile, Currado says, the man who took $450,000 from him, who pretended to be a lawyer – an officer of the court – and lied to police, faced no charges or trial.
Just before his trial began, Currado said he received emails from Jovanovich offering a written confession for $1,500, a video confession for $1,500 and another $1,000 for a “road map” to freedom.
Remember, I am “still the smartest person that you know,” one of the emails allegedly said.
It wasn’t always about the money, Currado said. “Whether it’s power or manipulation, he needs that rush.”
The emails allegedly sent by Jovanovich were sent to London police, and the Crown was notified at trial, Currado said.
Jovanovich was never charged in relation to the emails.
‘BENJAMIN Z’
Darko Jovanovich’s face hadn’t graced newspaper pages or broadcast screens.
In custody before his Windsor trial, he was able to avoid photographers there.
He refused to be photographed by London Free Press reporters when they first met him in 2017.
He managed to avoid testifying, and photographers again, at the Achille Currado trial in London.
After that scam became known, Jovanovich lost his home – his landlord told The London Free Press the house was rented under the name Chris Harling and he owed months of rent.
Whatever benefit he was getting from gathering information on criminals ended, and the bank of Currado was closed for good.
Jovanovich turned to petty crime.
Dozens of times in the fall of 2018 and spring of 2019, Jovanovich was charged with driving offences, stealing gas, and possessing property from six different people.
At his first court appearance in January 2020, by video link from jail, he waved and smiled at Free Press reporters sitting in the courtroom.
A month later, he pleaded guilty to four counts of possessing stolen licence plates and a provincial offences charge of allowing his vehicle to be driven without insurance.
More than 40 other charges against Jovanovich were withdrawn.
He was sentenced to 90 days, and with credit for time served, had 63 days left to serve for the Criminal Code counts, plus a $5,000 fine for the insurance offence.
Jovanovich had been jailed in Quebec and Ontario since Sept. 15, on similarly minor offences, court heard.
It’s not known where Jovanovich was arrested or what law enforcement agency arrested him.
“He tells me he is a diamond importer and exporter,” his lawyer, Nicola Circelli, told court.
But Jovanovich had no income now, had been struggling with an addiction to crystal meth and fentanyl, and “is remorseful for his actions,” she said.
After his trial, Jovanovich disappeared once again.
When he resurfaced – eventually being exposed for who he really is – it was because of a photo he posted himself.
Using the name Benjamin Zev, or B.Z. for short, Jovanovich surfaced on X Spaces, live audio-only debates, in July 2022, frequently speaking about the Ukraine-Russia war.
![Benjamin Zev](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/lfpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Screen-grab.jpg?location=column&quality=90&strip=all&w=375&sig=Z4v8XN_CBsFcIU9z2zkzNg)
The self-described lawyer and former Department of Justice official now living in Ottawa with his wife and children developed a reputation for being well-spoken, knowledgeable and staunchly pro-Israeli.
He built credibility, while forging contacts and friendships – with lawyers, journalists and other professionals – on the X social media platform.
Then Hamas, the militant group that controlled the Gaza Strip, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and B.Z. was propelled to a new level of influence.
“Naturally, he became the go-to person,” said Omar Maarouf, a Spaces host who went by Mr. Pickles on X, now by Mr. Pickle.
Maarouf, like many other Spaces regulars, formed a friendship with Jovanovich outside social media and the two spoke regularly on the phone and various messaging platforms.
Jovanovich soon caught the attention of prominent Spaces host Mario Nawfal, who made him a featured speaker on his discussions and, eventually, a co-host.
“He always conducted himself professionally,” Maarouf said of Jovanovich. “He’s your perfect co-host in a contentious setting.”
In a previous Free Press interview, Nawfal said Jovanovich was an eloquent speaker, knowledgeable and unbiased on a range of topics.
Jovanovich co-hosted a Dec. 10, 2023, Spaces event featuring X owner Elon Musk, influencer Andrew Tate, failed 2024 U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
But less than two weeks after co-hosting the event, Jovanovich disappeared from social media, leaving his network baffled.
Some Spaces users already had become suspicious of him. Jovanovich had posted a photo of himself on his X profile; one man did a reverse image search and came across a 2020 Free Press story on his conviction for traffic offences.
Sean Darland, an American political consultant and gun lobbyist, outed Jovanovich on Christmas day, in a thread on X.
Darland, who uses the X handle Liberty_Sean, hosted a Spaces event the next day that lasted more than 10 hours and drew thousands of listeners, many of whom shared stories about their online encounters with Jovanovich.
“He always seemed like he did have a New York accent, which was always kind of weird for me just because he said he was born in Israel, served in the IDF. He was in his twenties when he got to America . . . and then he became a New York City lawyer,” X user 6Ukima9 said during the discussion.
Another man described what he thought was a close friendship with Jovanovich.
“He kept saying that he was going to come visit or . . . have me fly up to Canada to hang out with him,” X user Based_Byzantine said during the discussion of Jovanovich.
“He even said he knew someone that lived in my hometown . . . and was trying to set me up with this woman.”
News of Jovanovich’s real identity, and his shady past, sent shock waves through the Spaces communities.
Nawfal said his team had tried to verify Jovanovich’s identity.
“He said he’d share his ID multiple times, but he kept delaying it every time for a different excuse.”
CODA
Three months later, Jovanovich remains a popular topic of discussion among his former Spaces colleagues, many of whom believe he’s returned to X posing as an American expatriate living in Mexico.
I said it many times. He could have been everything he faked.
Omar Maarouf, host known as Mr. Pickle on Spaces, about Darko Jovanovich, A.K.A. 'Benjamin Zev' (B.Z.)
“Spaces is an addiction,” Maarouf said. “He can’t leave.”
Despite the deceptions, Maarouf admitted he’d like to reconnect with Jovanovich, though he is at a loss as to what he’d say.
“I’d probably tell him . . . Ah man, I don’t know what I’d say. Probably things would be back to normal,” Maarouf said.
That is how the man of many names always rises and falls.
His intelligence and charm attract people and trust. Yet Darko Jovanovich can never use either to become anything beyond what he is.
“I said it many times,” Maarouf concluded. “He could have been everything he faked.”
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