4 years after conviction, 85-year-old on his way to prison

An octogenarian West Island businessman who was convicted four years ago of having sold millions of contraband cigarettes will have to start serving time in a federal penitentiary following a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday.

Gerald O’Reilly has been trying to avoid time behind bars since July 2, 2014, when a Quebec Court judge sentenced him to a five-year prison term. The Beaconsfield businessman was 81 on the day he was sentenced and he turned 85 in April.

The Quebec Court of Appeal supported Judge Louise Bourdeau’s decision on the length of the prison term in a decision delivered in August.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed O’Reilly ’s application for leave to appeal. The court does not release its motives for not hearing a case.

O’Reilly was the leader in a plot to ship more than 21 million contraband cigarettes to Nova Scotia. The case dated back to 2008 and dragged through the courts for years. The Sûreté du Québec estimated the contraband network took in $5 million and made a profit of $2 million.

The provincial police also estimated the network deprived federal and provincial governments of $6 million in tax revenue. At the start of the investigation in 2006, a source told the SQ that O’Reilly and his wife, who is now deceased, used an employee with their company, Alouette Canada Inc. in Town of Mount Royal, to deliver large shipments of contraband cigarettes to Nova Scotia in a 20-foot truck. On average, the source told the SQ, the employee would return with $60,000 in cash for O’Reilly.

O’Reilly’s lawyer had requested a sentence that he could serve in the community, but the judge determined his crimes outweighed his advanced age.

O’Reilly appealed his sentence immediately and, through his lawyer, told the Quebec Court of Appeal that his first night behind bars was very difficult for him because of his age.

He was ordered released while his appeal was pending.

In the decision delivered in August by the Quebec Court of Appeal, one of the three judges on the panel who supported Bourdeau’s decision wrote: “The age factor must ... be considered in light of the health of the offender as it relates to his life expectancy. Consequently, the mere fact that an accused is elderly is not, in and of itself, a mitigating factor in determining a prison sentence, unless the evidence reveals that he has little chance of serving the sentence before passing away.”