Canadian man loses legal battle to keep his secret million-dollar stash

Osgoode Hall, which houses the Court of Appeal for Ontario, is pictured here in Toronto, Canada on May 13, 2021. (Roberto Machado Noa/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource)

A Canadian man has lost his 16-year legal battle to get back more than $1.2 million he had stored in bizarre locations around his home.

On December 1, 2009, police visited Marcel Breton’s rural property on the outskirts of Thunder Bay, a city in northwest Ontario, looking for an illegal handgun, according to court documents.

There, they made an unusual discovery: $15,000 worth of bills in the floor heating ducts of the living room, about $32,000 stored in locations around the garage, and over $1.2 million worth of bills in a rubber tub buried in the ground under the garage.

Police also found a variety of drugs, including cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy, and told media at the time that they were “flabbergasted.”

Breton was charged with various offences, including possession of the proceeds of crime, and was initially convicted. But in a retrial, he successfully argued the search of his property wasn’t lawful, and he was acquitted.

But then came the matter of what to do with all of the money.

On Monday, an Ontario appeals court upheld a 2023 ruling that decided the lion’s share of the money should go to the government.

The appeals court noted the trial judge, Justice Bruce Fitzpatrick, remarked that it was “unusual for an average person to have such a large amount of money buried in tubs underneath their property.”

The judge also noted that the most common type of bill found in the bundles was $20, which is the most common denomination associated with the drug trade.

Moreover, Breton had not reported any income to the Canada Revenue Agency between 2001 and 2008, the documents said.

Fitzpatrick also did not buy Breton’s justifications for why he had so much cash – that he had won it in a lottery or casino, or had earned it from his vehicle repair business.

The trial judge then ordered that most of the money be handed over to the government, a decision the appeals court affirmed.

Sanaa Ahmed, assistant professor of law at the University of Calgary, said the case is an example of “legalistic hair-splitting.”

“Confronted with facts such as these, courts will often find ways to justify confiscating monies and thus ‘punishing’ the accused, even though they may have been acquitted otherwise,” she told CNN in an email.

“Unfortunately, as societies, we’re growing increasingly comfortable with breaking some rules to catch the so-called ‘bad guys,’” Ahmed added. “But we forget that we made those rules precisely to avoid subjective, normative judgments by those who found themselves in judicial office.”

Michelle Gallant, professor of law at the University of Manitoba, said in this case, the onus is on Breton to prove the money was obtained legally, noting “cash is the currency of illegal drugs.”

“What legitimate source might underlie dollars stuffed in a barrel and buried? Why bury it? Each day, at the very least, you would even bank interest,” Gallant said.

But it wasn’t all bad news for Breton. The appeals court upheld Fitzpatrick’s prior ruling that Breton gets to keep $15,000 which was found inside the vents of the home, since the judge couldn’t rule out that that cash had been obtained lawfully.

By Lex Harvey, CNN