Arrests in major fraud scheme

(Updated)

The RCMP arrested six people in Ontario Wednesday morning, for allegedly orchestrating an elaborate investment scheme across the country for the last decade.

The mounties says 5,000 people participated in this allegedly fraudulent investment scheme between 2004 and 2012. They say the Canadian government was also victimized and 200 million taxpayers’ dollars were lost.

Six men who operated an investment scheme out of these Yorkland Boulevard businesses in Toronto were arrested. The RCMP says victims ponied up between one thousand and three hundred thousand dollars per investment. Police say the accused group accused targetted people looking to lower their income taxes by putting their money in what they thought was a legal tax shelter.

Dave Bellamy is the RCMP Financial Crime Officer: “Investors were lead to believe that they could legitimately purchase a company’s business losses in a ratio of up to 5 times their initial investment. The problem was, these were not legitimate business losses, some of them were fictitious and manipulated through financial statements while the others losses were generated by companies operated by the accused.”

Investors lost their initial investment. Now they’re likely going to have to pay back the income tax they dodged by claiming those business losses.

Stephen White is the RCMP Ontario Commanding Officer: “This fraudulent scheme also resulted in a fraudulent scheme against the Government of Canada totalling over 200 million dollars.”

Henry Tso is the RCMP Inspector who oversaw the project: “How this worked is if you did invest $25,000 that money is totally gone because the 6 suspects and their alleged companies took these funds for their own personal use.”

THE RCMP says the companies used to run the scheme include: Integrated Business Concepts, Synergy Group 2000, Cason Global Wealth Association and IBCA 2009.

The men who were arrested are:

Vincent Villanti of Whitby.
Shane Davidson Smith of Peterborough.
David Prentice of Oakville.
Ravendra Chaudhary of North York.
Andrew Lloyd of Pickering, and
Joe Loschiavo of Etobicoke.

All of them appeared in a Toronto court today and face fraud related charges.