True to form, former Victoria financial advisor Ian Thow was misrepresenting himself right up to his February arrest by U.S. Marshals in Oregon.

Thow, 47, had been a fugitive from Canadian justice since June 2008, when he was criminally charged with 25 counts of defrauding investors out of an estimated $10 million by offering allegedly bogus investments.

At 6 a.m. on Feb. 17, the U.S. Marshals Oregon Fugitive Task Force set up surveillance at Thow’s upscale condominium complex in Portland. When he left to go jogging at 11:30 a.m., they pounced. “He didn’t seem too surprised,” Cory Cunningham of the U.S. Marshals Service told KGW-TV in Portland. “He asked how we were doing.”

The television station quoted a neighbour as saying Thow moved into the building in August 2008 and used his middle name, Greg. The neighbour said Thow claimed to be “employee number nine” at Microsoft, responsible for developing the Excel spreadsheet software. “I went through a whole line of questioning with him,” the neighbour recalls, “and he had answers for everything.”

That’s classic Thow. Totally unruffled, answers for everything. That’s how he kept his investors on the string from 2003 to 2005, when he was senior vice president in the Victoria branch of Berkshire Investment Group Ltd. (now part of Manulife Financial Corp. ) At press time, Thow was being detained at the Multnomah County Detention Center. Thow’s attorney, Patrick Ehlers, says his client will not fight extradition.

Once back in Canada, it’s a sure bet that, in view of his previous flight from justice, Thow will not get bail. He will stay in custody pending resolution of his case.

The background to this story is well known. While working at Berkshire, Thow lived a lavish lifestyle, which included a waterfront home, three jets, a helicopter, a yacht and personal indulgences such as gambling trips to Las Vegas and $10,000 bottles of scotch.

How he financed these extravagances did not become clear until after he resigned from Berkshire in May 2005. Clients (and some non-clients) filed lawsuits alleging he had induced them to put millions of dollars into non-existent mortgage schemes and fictitious investments in the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica. Berkshire denied responsibility, saying the investments were made “off-book,” without the firm’s knowledge.

In September 2005, Thow was assigned into bankruptcy, leaving more than $32 million in debts and little in the way of assets. Rather than co-operate with his creditors, he quietly slipped across the border to Seattle.

The B.C. Securities Commission held a hearing into Thow’s conduct and, in October 2007, branded his scheme “one of the most callous and audacious frauds this province has seen.” He was banned from the British Columbia securities market for life and fined $250,000, the maximum allowable at the time of his offences.

In December 2007, Berkshire agreed to pay the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada a $500,000 fine and $50,000 in costs after conceding it should have responded more quickly to two earlier complaints about Thow’s conduct. It also settled with most of the client victims.

The criminal process has been much slower. After Thow’s scheme was discovered in May 2005, Vancouver’s integrated market enforcement team began an investigation, but it wasn’t until June 2008 that the Crown laid charges. By that time, Thow was long gone. On Jan. 6, Canadian authorities obtained a provisional warrant for his arrest in the U.S.

This is only the second criminal charge the Vancouver IMET has laid since it was formed five years ago. The first was in May 2006 against Kevin Steele, who pleaded guilty to a commodities-related fraud. IMET currently has about 23 staff members and an annual budget of $2.5 million. With so much money being spent and such abysmal results, taxpayers should be concerned. IE