This is a very large, though side inves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place as part of the Dark Knight’s viral mar­ket­ing. A lot of inter­est­ing details, doc­u­ments and images have been unveiled as a result of this sleuthing, so I’m going to do my best to relay all of this to you now.

Back­ground on Francis

Fran­cis Notoro is a Gotham police offi­cer that appears on the “Con­cerned Cit­i­zens for a Bet­ter Gotham” web­site, one of the eight that damned Har­vey Dent in a press conference:

Eight Gotham police offi­cers stood up for the truth today at a morn­ing press con­fer­ence at Gotham’s Hotel Inter­na­tionale. One by one, the police offi­cers took the podium and told their story. Their dev­as­tat­ing tes­ti­mony showed that Dent is a dis­hon­est, cor­rupt, out-of-control pros­e­cu­tor who threat­ened police offi­cers in order to get them to tes­tify against inno­cent cops who Dent wanted in jail. Fran­cis Notaro, Sergeant, told the press corps that Dent had offered him money to tes­tify against an inno­cent cop, Jimmy Scaliano.

He cur­rently fea­tures in CCFABG’s lat­est adver­tise­ment: CCFABG Ad

And update to the Gotham Police web­site, award­ing him the Gotham Medal of Com­men­da­tion:

At a cer­e­mony in City Hall’s Ban­quet Room yes­ter­day, Gotham Police Depart­ment Sgt. Fran­cis X. Notaro received the Gotham Medal of Com­men­da­tion. It is the high­est medal one can receive from the Mayor of Gotham, and requires “an extra­or­di­nary act of courage in the face of real dan­ger to one’s self.” Mayor Gar­cia as well as numer­ous other dig­ni­taries were there to honor Sgt. Notaro, who was accom­pa­nied to the event by his wife Han­nah and his two chil­dren, Samuel, 7, and Rachel, 4.

The com­men­da­tion emerged from Sgt. Notaro’s actions of May 13 of last year. A crazed gun­man began shoot­ing up passers-by in an alley down­town off of Jack­son and Colum­bus at around 2 AM.

Notaro, who was not on duty at that hour but hap­pened to be close by, heard the shots, went straight to the scene of the inci­dent, and shot and killed the per­pe­tra­tor. Notaro’s actions put him­self at grave risk of death, while sav­ing the lives of inno­cent bystanders.

“Sgt. Notaro reflects the very best of Gotham,” said Mayor Gar­cia. “He rep­re­sents the spirit of ded­i­ca­tion, duty, and com­mit­ment to the rule of law that we all can admire.”

The Fan Inves­ti­ga­tion and Mystery

“jlevine”

All the infor­ma­tion posted so far is read­ily avail­able on the viral sites. Here is where the jour­ney really begins. Look­ing at the updated Gotham Police page, the pic­ture of Frank Notaro used asks not to be hotlinked — this begs us to look at the URL:

the​gotham​times​.com/​m​e​d​i​a​/​j​l​e​v​i​n​e​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​g​t​p​0​0​3​3​9​.​jpg

By incre­ment­ing the num­ber on the image we can find a few more pic­tures of Frank with his chil­dren. The name in the URL, ‘jlevine’ refers to one James Levine, cited in The Maiden Avenue Report:

TIMES REPORTER LEVINE: “MEDIA PACKRAT” PREPPING EXCLUSIVE NOTAROINTERVIEW?

Using the known folder and try­ing some dif­fer­ent file names, this inter­view is uncov­ered: Down­load, here’s an excerpt:

Notaro: Har­vey Dent offered me cash money to lie about a good cop.
Levine: Yep, that’s what the ad says.
Notaro: Cash money. To lie.
Levine: What cop was he try­ing to pros­e­cute?
Notaro: James Scaliano.
Levine: Scaliano, Scaliano…Ahh, Scaliano, this is the guy who was found guilty of shak­ing down shop own­ers for pro­tec­tion money and roughin’ up guys for the shy­locks.
Notaro: Lies. All lies. Scaliano was a good man.

Voice­mail Messages

Mov­ing swiftly on, hope you are with us so far. Onto a site we uncov­ered a short while ago, that of CCFABG leader Joseph (aka Joe) Can­do­loro. On this page is a tele­phone num­ber, 1866 626 8049, com­bin­ing it with the price of “Joe’s favourite” at Rossi’s deli (1149), yields voicemail.

Joe’s Favorite
An 8oz sir­loin cooked to order and 3 fan­tail shrimp, breaded and fried. $11.49

The first mes­sage we hear is a lit­tle gem from Albert Rossi which reveals a secure doc­u­ment num­ber, IA176495U (“killed by the men upstairs”) and he leaves his num­ber at the end of the mes­sage, 1866 580 3840. Use the pin “9482” to access his voice­mail — these let­ters cor­re­spond to his mother’s name Zita (we found this out at St Swith­uns). Using this a series of voice mes­sages were uncov­ered. These mes­sages reveal the secret sto­ries of three char­ac­ters — Can­do­loro, Rossi and Notaro. Within a mes­sage to Rossi, Notaro reveals his num­ber to be 1866 626 608 3515. Com­bin­ing this with his date of birth as a pin (32976 — aka 3/29/76) we get access to another phone and set of messages.

Down­load Pack of all MP3 Voicemails

Secure Inter­nal Documents

Now onto the real nitty gritty. Every­thing so far has been triv­ial. For those that didn’t know, the Gotham Police web­site has a secret login page at this loca­tion. Back in Decem­ber we used this to retrieve some secret doc­u­ments. We login using user­name: Barhyte­Glenn, pass­word: tevre­den­heid,

By sub­mit­ting Frank’s name to the We Are The Answer web­site, you get this email response,

Thank you for your sub­mis­sion. Offi­cer Fran­cis Notaro is cur­rently being inves­ti­gated to deter­mine his guilt or innocence.

We Are The Answer will keep the cit­i­zens of Gotham informed regard­ing this, and other, inves­ti­ga­tions of police officers.

UmVmOg0KSUE4MjM0OTcxDQpJQTgzNzYxMjENCklBODM4ODU1NQ0KDQo=

That code at the end is very intrigu­ing. It turns out that it is Base64 encoded, decod­ing this gives us three doc­u­ment num­bers, IA823497, IA8376121, IA8388555.

Log­ging into the secure doc­u­ments page and enter­ing the num­ber from Rossi’s voice­mail reveals the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion into the use of deadly force by Franci Notaro — this shows that his story has incon­sis­ten­cies. The doc­u­ment has since been removed from the archives (as per the voice message).

Next up we have the first of the Inter­nal Affairs num­bers, which gives us a wire­tap record­ing between Rossi and Notaro which reveals details of a cover up, regard­ing the events that led to Notaro’s commendation.

Down­load Wire­tap MP3

The sec­ond of the encrypted doc­u­ments is Notaro’s Bank state­ment. Note the $10,000 deposits from JC, believed to be Mr Candoloro.

Last but not least, there is some DNA evi­dence from the crime scene:

These sam­ples prove the victim’s innocence.

Many many thanks to the mem­bers at Super­Hero­Hype