| Harvey Specter | 09-16-2009 11:49 PM |
Kelowna victim of Ponzi scheme lost everything, took her own life
http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465...n?size=620x400 http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465...n?size=620x400 Quote:
CALGARY - A woman alleged to have been victimized by what police describe as a $100-million Ponzi scheme sank into a deep depression after losing her savings - then took her own life, her family says.
Gloria Lozinski said her sister Edna Coulic of Kelowna, B.C., invested more than $300,000 in the alleged scheme - one that was introduced to her by a friend as an investment opportunity where she could make 30 to 40 per cent returns - but 18 months ago learned that her money was likely lost forever.
She said her sister had worked hard to build a career in real estate and was making plans to spend some of her promised fortune on her aging mother.
“She was outgoing, vibrant, sociable, kind, giving, sharing. She was genuinely a really great person who wouldn’t do harm to anybody,” said Lozinski. “When she found out some of that accomplishment and her investing made her look really rather kind of foolish, it was very difficult for her to forgive herself.”
Coulic committed suicide in October 2008.
“At the end of it, she became anti-social, she just didn’t have any more,” said Lozinski. “She didn’t want to go out as much. Her demeanour changed to the point where she lost her zest for life.
“She was a very intelligent, articulate woman. There’s no way she would have been conned except if these guys were very, very good at what they did.”
Two Calgary-area men, Milowe Brost and Gary Sorenson, have been charged with running the Ponzi scheme. Sorenson is believed to be out of the country, possibly in Honduras, and Brost has been arrested and released on bail.
A Ponzi scam typically includes promises of high investment returns, and sees early investors paid off with cash from newer investors until the pyramid collapses. Investors are discouraged from withdrawing any funds for as long as possible.
Police claim that more than 3,000 investors lost hundreds of millions of dollars in total, potentially making it one of the largest in Canadian history.
Dozens of investigators in the Canada Revenue Agency's Calgary office are hunkered down probing the tax consequences of the fraud charges.
The tax examination of the Calgary-based investment plot is part of a two-year investigation and follows an intense, two-day search of 50 locations across Western Canada by agency investigators and auditors in March 2008. At that time, 300 tax officials swept the locations - which included usually quiet accountants’ offices - for evidence related to fictitious registered retirement savings plans, investment scams and tax evasion.
Court documents filed last year to execute search warrants say the Canada Revenue Agency has reassessed 295 related investors in at least $29 million in RRSP withdrawals, "creating a significant tax consequence" for those people.
Investigators allege a North America-wide army of investment advisers called "structurists" did much of the work recruiting investors through entities such as the Institute for Financial Learning.
Lozinski said she hopes those structurists are investigated by police.
“When people say, how did she buy into it? Well, that’s exactly how. They had people that had a reputation, that had education, that had a title that went with it.”
With files from Kelly Cryderman, Gwendolyn Richards and Kristen Odland
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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