Bob Mackin
A mutual fund dealer accused of pilfering more than $350,000 from two retired clients faces a July 29 hearing in Vancouver.
The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) issued a statement of allegations on May 14, accusing 2018-registered Marc-Antoine Ladeiro of Scotia Securities Inc. of misappropriating funds and creating false records.
CIRO’s Vancouver office is in Royal Centre. (Royal Centre)
The statement says that, between July 2020 and February 2022, Ladeiro obtained $354,700 from two retired clients aged between 88 and 90. At the end of December 2021, one of the clients died.
CIRO said he did so by transferring proceeds from matured guaranteed investment certificates and redeemed mutual funds into the clients’ bank accounts and then moving $354,700 to fictitious accounts that he controlled. He then allegedly transferred $264,609 to his personal bank account, $19,100 to an online payment service and $66,100 to other bank accounts.
“The transfers of monies from the clients’ bank accounts to the fictitious accounts described above were done by the respondent without the clients’ knowledge or authorization,” said the CIRO statement.
Ladeiro, it said, has failed to repay or account for the monies taken from the clients. When the dealer member discovered and investigated, it compensated the clients for their losses.
In April, a CIRO hearing panel accepted a settlement with a former investment dealer who embezzled almost $6 million from clients, some of whom were elderly and in poor health.
Michael Rowland Tomkins of Nanaimo “committed serious transgressions, involving large sums of money. He engaged in an ongoing pattern of intentional deception. This was far from an isolated lapse in judgment,” said the decision by the CIRO panel, chaired by lawyer Lynn Smith.
