A former fund rep and financial planner who tried to argue that he was wrongly convicted of fraud because his Ponzi scheme targeted existing clients and referrals from friends and family, and not the public at large, had his appeal denied by the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
In 2017, Daniel Reeve — a former financial planner and mutual fund rep in the Kitchener, Ont., area — was charged and convicted of one charge of theft over $5,000 and one charge of defrauding the public, in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme that cost investors over $10 million.
In his decision, Justice Antonio Skarica of the Superior Court of Justice, found that this was “an overwhelming case of fraud and theft perpetrated by a devious, clever, calculating, cold-hearted man who has absolutely no remorse for the many lives that he ruined.”
Following his conviction, in 2018, Reeve was sentenced to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay $10.9 million in restitution.
Now, the Court of Appeal has dismissed a bid to overturn that conviction.
On appeal, among other things, Reeve argued that his fraud conviction “should be set aside because there was no evidence that he had defrauded ‘the public’.”
According to the court’s decision, Reeve argued that “while his alleged frauds may have targeted particular individuals, they did not rise to the level of a ‘fraud on the public’— which, he argued “must involve a fraudulent solicitation directed at the public at large, or at least at a particular segment of the public indiscriminately.”
In his case, Reeve’s alleged fraud involved long-time clients, referrals from friends and family, and investors that attended his seminars or speaking engagements.
“In the appellant’s view, there was no broader solicitation of ‘the public’ sufficient to sustain a conviction for defrauding the public,” the court noted.
The appeal court rejected the argument.
“The fact that the appellant selected his victims in different ways, or that over time he found it necessary to develop more than one Ponzi scheme in order to keep his companies afloat, fund his lifestyle, or make payments to his ex-wife, does not detract from the characterization of the fraud as having been on ‘the public’,” the appeal court said in dismissing the appeal.
In 2018, Ontario’s Capital Markets Tribunal permanently banned Reeve based on his conviction.