A financial adviser who stole millions from at least 19 clients – including friends, family, and senior citizens – by convincing them to invest in a bogus company while using their funds to bankroll his lavish lifestyle was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday.
In his oral ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger called Jacques Scribnock’s crimes an “egregious fraud.”
“The impact on his victims was severe,” Maranger said. “He continued to live his opulent lifestyle on the backs of the people from whom he stole money.”
Scribnock was arrested and charged in April 2013 on several charges of fraud between about 2008 and 2012. Last year, he pleaded guilty to 18 charges of fraud and one count of money laundering. He is said to have collected about $2.8 million over a four-year period by convincing clients to write cheques and bank notes to a shell corporation he created.
The court heard many of the victims who lost money were Scribnock’s close friends and family who trusted his decades of experience managing investments.
Gail Worgan, Scribnock’s largest single victim, was bilked out of a $1.5-million retirement nest egg made up of an inheritance and an investment portfolio that she had been building since 1992.
The 68-year-old says she is now forced to put her house up for sale and return to work in order to get by. Losing her savings, she says, also meant she was unable to care for her sick mother before she died.
“It’s just ruined my live. And my mother was so very ill,” Worgan told CTV Ottawa. “At the end, I didn’t have any money at all to give her the care she needed.”
Like many of the 19 defrauded clients, Worgan had known and trusted Scribnock for decades before anything unusual started happening with her investments.
It remains unclear where all the money went, but the court heard Scribnock bought a luxury condo in Mississauga, Ont., and had a taste for buying high-end cars for himself and his immediate family.
For some of the victims with direct family ties, the betrayal goes beyond money.
Diane McMartin lost $50,000 after investing with Scribnock, a first cousin she once looked up to. She said it was important to him to “look good in front of the family.”
“He was supposed to be the successful one,” McMartin said. “I’m just happy that both our sets of parents are no longer here to witness all of this.”
Scribnock will spend seven years in prison, minus the 18 months he has already served.
The ruling comes as cold comfort to victims such as Worgan, whose finances and retirement plans have been destroyed by someone she put her trust in.
“We're told it's a good sentence, but it will never be enough for me,” she said. “I've lost everything”
With a report from CTV Ottawa’s Annie Bergeron Oliver