MYSTERY OF MIKE GOULD
Calgarian has yet to share claimed lottery win
One night in February, Jacqueline Jordan’s ex-boss showed up at her door in Airdrie, Alta., with an outrageous offer.
“Jackie, I’m gonna change your life,” she said he told her.
He announced he was going to gift Jordan $1 million — a portion of the riches he said he had amassed from a lottery win and smart investments.
Jordan was skeptical. But over the following weeks, she said, he managed to string her along, showing her documents purportedly from various financial institutions as proof of his wealth. In late March, he convinced Jordan and her daughter — along with several other families to whom he had allegedly promised similar gifts — to meet him in downtown Calgary for the big payout.
Though she waited in an office building lounge each day for the better part of a week, Jordan said her former boss never came through with the money.
“He’s after the attention. He’s after people to be in awe of him,” Jordan, 49, told the National Post. “He’s got to be the hero. It doesn’t matter that it’s all fictional.”
The man who made the promise is Mike Gould of Calgary — the same man who recently gained national media attention when he announced plans to donate $7.5 million to a junior hockey team in his hometown of Kimberley, B.C., then fell under suspicion when, weeks later, the team said it hadn’t received the money.
Gould’s critics say a pattern of making big promises and not delivering on them has left behind a trail of frustration: Jordan said she quit a construction job based on Gould’s promises; the Kimberley Minor Hockey Association said community donations dried up because of the rumoured big gift; and the owner of a B.C. diner said she got stiffed by Gould when an $8,000 tab for the banquet he organized to celebrate his gift to the hockey team went unpaid for weeks.
In phone conversations with the National Post, Gould, 38, has been adamant his promises would be fulfilled. He maintained the delays were the result of recurring bank “screw-ups” or his assets being frozen because of actions taken by Alberta’s maintenance enforcement program, which enforces court-ordered child and spousal support.
“They’re going to be resolved pretty dang quick,” he said. He also threatened to sue the Post if it published the allegations against him. “All you want to do is keep fishing and destroying people’s lives,” he said.
Gould’s father, Larry, who runs a sawmill in Skookumchuck, B.C., told the Post his son genuinely believes he has access to vast wealth and wants to share it with the people closest to him. “He swears to God that it’s the absolute gospel truth,” he said.
But the father acknowledged that, to date, the family hasn’t seen any hard evidence of Gould’s alleged fortunes and that eventually the police may need to intervene to stop his “antics.”
“If (what Mike is saying) is not true, that kid needs to be locked up for a little while — plain and simple. You can’t go around doing this to people.”
Jordan said she got to know Gould when they worked brief construction jobs together in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Gould was the foreman. They had kept in touch and at one point, had a short romantic fling.
When Gould showed up at her home in February and announced his gift, she said she was immediately suspicious.
When he pulled out his phone and showed her a bank statement, her thought immediately turned to Photoshop.
But he insisted that he had made loads of money from a lottery win and investments in apps.
A couple of days later, he showed up again with a document bearing TD Wealth Management letterhead. It was titled “Gift Letter.”
“This letter confirms that the undersigned is making a financial gift of $1,000,000.00 to Jacqueline Jordan,” the document read.
But days passed and the money didn’t appear. Gould told her there had been a “glitch.” He produced a document dated March 7 with letterhead from FINTRAC, the federal financial intelligence agency.
The letter, filled with typos and grammatical mistakes, said the agency had frozen his accounts because he was being “looked into for money laundering, Over the large amounts of money being gift out, as reported by all bank of Canada.” (The documents referenced in this story are quoted verbatim).
A few weeks later, things appeared to be back on track when Gould gave Jordan a new letter (minus the letterhead) promising $10 million.
Jordan, who has multiple sclerosis, said she asked Gould at one point: “‘Is this money real, Mike? Can I quit my job?’ ”
She said he replied, “‘ Yup, money’s real and you can quit your job.’ ”
And so she quit her construction job.
Gould told the Post he never explicitly told Jordan to leave her job. “I said, ‘If I can get everything done and finalized, maybe there might be a possibility after I give you the money, you can do whatever you want.’ ”
Jordan said she and her daughter, Ashley Holte, were instructed at the end of March to meet Gould in downtown Calgary’s Bankers Hall for the big payout, as were a handful of other families — some of whom had travelled from British Columbia.
They sat on leather couches in a public lounge, Jordan said, and waited as Gould purportedly met with his bankers upstairs. “Mike would flutter in and flutter out,” she recalled.
But hours turned into days with no payout.
“There was always some screwup,” Jordan said. “They didn’t get the drafts done in time. They had to change this, they had to change that. There was always an excuse.”
At the end of the week, Holte decided to call one of the RBC employees Gould said he was meeting with.
“He said, ‘ We didn’t receive any confirmation of funds from Mr. Gould, so we didn’t do any business with him,’ ” she recalled.
Gould said he did, in fact, provide proof of his financials but ended the relationship when that employee asked him to write a bank draft in the employee’s name for a large sum.
The RBC employee did not respond to the Post’s message via LinkedIn. Gould would not disclose the names of other bankers he dealt with. The Post left messages with some of the other families who allegedly gathered at Bankers Hall that week, but they did not respond.
Upset she’d wasted an entire week, Jordan began to dig. She called the employee named on the original letter with the TD letterhead. The employee told her he did not draft the letter and that Gould never offered proof of funds, she said. That employee did not respond to a message from the Post.
Jordan also contacted the person whose name appeared on the FINTRAC letter. He told her in an email the letter was not authentic and suggested she contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and police. “I, too, will be contacting the RCMP about the improper use of FINTRAC material,” his email said. The Post confirmed with the FINTRAC employee that he sent the email to Jordan.
Nonetheless, Gould insisted to the Post all the documents he provided on financial institutions’ letterhead were authentic and that the FINTRAC letter came from one of the banks.
Meanwhile, Jordan and Holte went to the Airdrie RCMP detachment armed with a printout of 300 pages of text messages and other documents, but they said police told them they couldn’t do anything because no money had exchanged hands. An Airdrie RCMP spokesman did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
Gould continued to tell people the money was coming. When Jordan and Holte pressed him for more proof, Gould sent them a video of himself sitting on a bed with three thick envelopes addressed to different families, each purportedly stuffed with $100,000 cash. “Money, amazing what that looks like,” he said in the video.
Gould told the Post each envelope was delivered but declined to offer proof. The Post was unable to reach the families for comment.
Jordan and Holte remained skeptical, telling Gould over the summer in a text message he should “come clean” about this “phantom money.” Gould subsequently sent a trio of letters in October and November with BMO Nesbitt Burns letterhead. As before, they were riddled with typos. One stated all his paperwork was “now fully ready to be sign off ” and that he “can now hand out everything.” Another letter stated that Gould was in “very good financial standing of high integrity” and that a balance of $1.5 billion would be available on Nov. 7. It went on to say that Gould had over $9 billion invested, had sold a winning Euro Millions Lottery ticket for $140 million and had won over $173 million gambling in “Los Vegas.”
A BMO spokesman told the Post the letters “are not authentic.”
Asked about the documents, Gould told the Post “everything I’ve gotten is from certain bank- ers” and that they accurately summarize his wealth. He said he was aware of the typos. “But I can’t help it if we have these new people that are coming into Canada getting these jobs and don’t understand proper grammar yet.”
Around the time Gould circulated these letters, questions began to swirl about a $7.5 million donation Gould had promised to a B.C. minor hockey team, the Kimberley Dynamiters, during an on-ice pregame ceremony in mid- October. The team’s board of directors later posted a Facebook message saying the money had not been received.
At the time, Gould told the Post and other media the banks had “screwed up.” He also cited the need to resolve some personal issues related to support payments to an ex-partner. “I have all my stuff in order,” he said, promising the team would get the money within 10 days.
But nothing happened. Asked this week for an update, Gould said he was waiting for a cheque to clear through the expartner’s account. “As soon as that cheque clears … I’m golden.”
Meanwhile, the owner of the Northwest Grill, a diner in Kimberley, reported on social media that Gould had hosted a banquet to celebrate the donation in midOctober but that the $8,000 tab had gone unpaid.
Owner Jolene Salanski told the Post that Gould initially paid with two cheques. But the following day, she said, he called to ask her not to cash them. Instead, she said, he would bring her a bank draft for $25,000 because he wanted to show his appreciation to her.
When Gould showed up, he didn’t have a bank draft. Instead, she said, he brought a gift letter declaring his intent to give her $100,000. She agreed to sign it.
But her suspicions grew, she said, when Gould returned with a second gift letter upping the amount to $250,000. She didn’t sign that one.
At one point, he also produced a reference letter purportedly from a bank manager. It looked as if it had been written by a two-yearold, Salanski said.
Gould later returned with yet another gift letter — this time with the amount left blank, she said. He told her to write whatever amount she wanted. Her patience was by now wearing thin; she told him she just wanted the tab paid, she said.
Salanski said she eventually took the cheques to the bank and was told there were insufficient funds. Later that day, she delivered the cheques to the RCMP in Cranbrook, B.C. A Cranbrook RCMP spokeswoman did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
Last week, Salanski said, Gould finally came in and paid the $8,000 bill in cash, using hundreds and fifties. Gould made a big spectacle of it, counting out the bills in front of patrons, she said.
Gould confirmed to the Post he had used his stepfather’s cheques, and said he asked Salanski not to cash them because he didn’t have access to funds to give to his stepfather to cover the payment.
He said he offered the gift letter to Salanski because he wanted to help her out.
Alberta civil court records show that in 2016, a judgment was handed down against Gould over an unpaid $4,300 credit card debt. Gould denies ever being served with the lawsuit.
Gould is a “good kid” with a “heart that’s as big as gold,” his father said. “But,” Larry Gould said, “I’m rather beside myself sometimes. … You don’t know whether to believe him or not. That’s the problem.”
The senior Gould said his son has issued “dozens” of gift letters to family and friends and presented various documents purporting to show his wealth. “Where he comes up with this stuff is beyond me,” he said.
Just this week, his son told him that he was getting close to accessing his fortunes.
“I thought, ‘Right, I’ve heard this story, Mike.’”
For a fleeting moment, Jordan said, she and her daughter thought about the new homes and furniture they were going to get. Then Jordan found herself out of work for four months and had her truck repossessed.
“He cost me everything,” she said.
They are now considering a lawsuit.
“My mom had all these hopes and dreams about being able to retire,” Holte said. “My mom quit her job for this lie — this epic lie.”
Gould said he understands people are angry. But when asked when he would deliver on his promises, he couldn’t say.
“There’s no law stating that I have to give the money,” he told the Post at one point.
But later, he suggested a reporter contact him again in a couple weeks.
“How about you call me in two weeks and I’ll have something for you,” he said. “I’ll have one of the greatest stories for you.”
There was always some screwup. They didn’t get the drafts done in time. They had to change this, they had to change that. There was always an excuse.”