Court Orders That British Colombia Scammer Must Surrender Pension To Repay Victims
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The British Colombia Supreme Court recently announced that Earle Douglass Pasquill, a man who carried out one of the largest investment frauds in the region, has failed to comply with the court’s past order. The order revolved around remittances on two of his accounts registered with BCSC, as he has been ordered to pay BCSC yearly payments from the mentioned accounts.
So far, Pasquill’s debt of 36 million dollars, and due to his failure to follow the court’s orders, he will now have to surrender to the BCSC any payments that arrive from his two Life Income Fund (LIF) accounts.
A LIF account is a tax-deferred account that is federally regulated, and individuals’ pension is stored within it. It can be withdrawn from periodically over the person’s retirement years. Pasquill, for example, tends to make annual withdrawals during which he retrieves roughly $75,000.
As of April 2024, the amount stored within his LIF account sits at $551,349, and any payment that resulted from the fraud would become payable to the victims through BCSC.
Two Acts Were Crucial To Reach The Decision
The decision was made by the Supreme Court of Canada and BCSC, and it was preceded by changes to two acts — the Pension Benefits Standards Act and the Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act in 2023. As such, it was made a matter of priority in order to specify that certain pension funds are administratively unattainable, and are not free regarding the orders made in accordance with the Act.
The changes played a crucial role in allowing BCSC to recover the imposed penalties. It is also worth noting that the BCSC panel determined that Pasquill and Michael Patrick Lathigee, directors and controllers of the Freedom Investment Club, managed to raise more than $17 million through the marketing of securities.
British Colombia is no stranger to investment frauds, and only a few months ago, the BCSC managed to wrap up a major investigation into a fraud case involving $13 million tied to a case surrounding a now-defunct crypto trading platform ezBtc, based in Nanaimo.
Despite the massive crypto scam, digital currency adoption in Canada is still quite sluggish, with only 3% of the population using cryptocurrencies daily.
