The RCMP is investigating whether a B.C. government employee at the centre of a major privacy breach used false identification to get his job, court documents show.

The allegation is contained in a sworn statement that police used to get a search warrant for the Victoria home of Richard Ernest Wainwright in April. He has not been charged with any offence.

Warrant information alleges that Wainwright, 44, used forged or altered documents to obtain a B.C. identification card and driver's licence in the name of Richard Ernest Perran.

"I believe that Wainwright used this false information in order to gain employment with the B.C. government," Sgt. Andrew Cowan, head of the federal commercial crime unit in Victoria, writes in the warrant information.

During the search, police seized equipment suspected of being used to produce fake identity documents, including a laminator, card printer, counterfeit currency detector, scanner and high-performance colour photo printer, according to search warrant documents obtained by the Times Colonist.

The documents show that police seized a stamp that read "B.C. Ministry of Human Resources," with a label on the side that said "mail room do not remove"; a stamp that read "certified true copy of original document"; and an application for a government credit card. There were also numerous computers and laptops, USB drives, a Taser, passport applications, criminal record check forms and about eight credit cards under various names.

The B.C. government said last month that the RCMP also found the personal data for 1,400 government income-assistance clients during the search.

Wainwright was hired by the B.C. government in 2007 and given access to sensitive personal information of clients, despite having a criminal record.

Wainwright had been convicted of theft, unauthorized use of credit-card data, possession and use of counterfeit money, and two counts of possession of stolen property, stemming from an October 2004 police investigation in Kamloops and Merritt, court records show. He received an 18-month conditional sentence in 2005.

The B.C. government is refusing to answer questions about whether employees undergo criminal records checks before they are hired. When he was fired in October, Wainwright was listed under the name Richard Perran in the government directory, working as an operations supervisor in the medical benefits branch of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. There is no criminal record for a Richard Perran, according to the search warrant.

The fact police are investigating how Perran obtained his job raises new questions about the government's attempts to downplay the story when it became public last month.

On Nov. 20, Citizens' Services Minister Ben Stewart told the Times Colonist that police had found the personal data of the 1,400 clients in the home of a government employee during the course of a "totally unrelated" investigation.

When he was asked if the police investigation was related to the employee's job, he said: "No, it wasn't related to that."

Asked if he was confident in saying the RCMP investigation was related to the employee's personal life, Stewart said: "Yes. That's right. It turned up in an investigation that they were doing unrelated to this issue [the privacy breach] and they turned the records over to the government basically and notified us of the problem."

Asked when that happened, Stewart paused then said: "You know, I first became aware of it just, probably, a couple of weeks ago, and staff were notified a few days before that."

What Stewart didn't say was that the RCMP had conducted the search nearly seven months earlier and had alerted government officials at the time. But it wasn't until late October that Stewart and other ministers learned of the breach, or that Wainwright was fired from his job.

The clients, whose personal information were found in Wainwright's home, were informed of the breach last month.

Stewart declined comment yesterday. Wainwright has not returned calls.

rfshaw@tc.canwest.com

lkines@tc.canwest.com