MONTREAL - A Montreal homicide detective who worked on many high-profile cases has been found guilty of passing confidential police information to criminals.

Mario Lambert, a 20-year veteran of the Montreal police department was charged in 2009 with several counts of passing licence plate numbers, addresses, and other information to criminal organizations.

Access to the police database requires an officer to enter his or her badge number, and criminal charges are often laid against anyone caught misusing the tool.

The Surete du Quebec investigation discovered that Lambert was getting information on many cases unrelated to his own investigations.

Witnesses called to the stand in Lambert's trial included internal affairs investigators who said they interrogated Lambert for hours, but found the veteran detective was not susceptible to interrogation techniques.

The Internal Affairs department started their investigation after hearing from a criminal contact.

This contact said he had someone within the police department who could pass along information on any license plate.

Investigators then spent two years trying to determine who was accessing the database, and planted several fake license plate numbers in order to catch their suspect.

The RCMP also set up hidden cameras in order to track down the culprit.