Fraud charges worry investors in local business
Couple faces accusations over sale of more than $800,000 in shares
After years of battling side by side on the ice, he had their trust. So when Marc Brunet offered to bring friends in on a big investment opportunity, they lined up with cash in hand, they say.
But now, years later, with their hockey teammate facing charges after a joint investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), the RCMP and the OPP, those same friends say they wish they’d looked into the investment offer a little more carefully.
Brunet and his wife, Helene, have been charged with fraud after they allegedly sold more than $800,000 worth of shares in their company, MultiCast Networks Holdings Inc. (MCN) to private investors. The OSC alleges “a significant percentage of the money obtained was used by the Brunets for their personal benefit.”
MCN has been billed as an online streaming service for live events, including sports. The business has offered impressive financial projections, and cited an advisory board that was said to include prominent figures, including Montreal Canadiens great Yvan Cournoyer.
However, according to those who say they invested — and an investigation by this newspaper — there were warning signs things weren’t all rosy.
Authorities allege the Brunets did not have the required registration to sell shares of MultiCast, and that they traded shares without proper documentation, such as a prospectus, to explain the company ’s business and associated risks.
In order to deal in securities in Ontario, a business or person must be registered with the securities commission. There are exemptions to this rule when selling shares in a private company to family, friends and associates, but the charges suggest OSC investigators do not believe these exemptions applied to the Brunets.
The charges have made waves in the rural south end of the city, where numerous people claim to have fallen victim to the alleged fraud. Those affected allege Brunet, a former Ottawa police officer with ties to the local recreational hockey community, took tens of thousands of dollars in investment in MultiCast Networks years after the firm was ordered to dissolve by Industry Canada (now known as Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED).
The charges have not been tested in court and the Brunets have yet to enter a plea. Repeated attempts by this newspaper to reach the Brunets to discuss the company and the charges against them have been unsuccessful.
According to official government documents from Industry Canada’s corporate database, Brunet operated MultiCast Networks Holdings Inc., as well as one other related business with a similar name, between 2001 and 2011.
However, according to those same documents, the firms failed to provide annual filings for several years between 2009 and 2011.
That led the federal regulator to issue a certificate of dissolution to each firm in 2011, ending their status as registered businesses under the Canada Business Corporations Act. When a company is dissolved, “the legal existence of the corporation has ended,” explained a spokesman with ISED.
In order to operate as a corporation in Canada, a company must be registered with either the federal government or the province in which it plans to function. There is no record to suggest that Brunet ever tried to register MultiCast Networks as a business in Ontario.
However, several people who invested in the firm allege Brunet solicited funds for MultiCast Networks after it was dissolved. Those same investors say that, since investing, they have not received regular quarterly financial reports or been invited to an annual general meeting of shareholders, the latter of which is a requirement for a corporation that wants to stay in good standing.
This newspaper met with five individuals who claim to have been caught up in the alleged fraud. Most wanted to remain anonymous. Some were worried that being identified could affect their professional lives, while others were simply embarrassed. Some alleged they have invested more than $60,000 in Brunet’s company.
Some of those making allegations have said they were close friends with Brunet, and many had been playing recreational hockey with him for years. They also knew he had previously been a police officer with the Ottawa Police Service, which, they said, enhanced his credibility in their minds.
Those who invested said Brunet would often talk about the business success that MultiCast Networks was becoming.
They heard about the business trips he was taking. They saw swag and branded MultiCast Networks paraphernalia, including hockey jerseys with MCN branding on them, which Brunet provided for a tournament his team attended in the U.S. just last year.
The buzz began to spread outside of the hockey community. Soon, others wanted in.
“I went to him,” said Darrin Dowich, who invested in MCN in 2013 in hopes of turning a tidy profit that could help his family. “I was hearing all these great things. My money was going to go toward my daughter’s education.”
MCN’s streaming service appeared to have the makings of an exciting business venture.
There were numerous news releases on its website. One, dated July 10, 2013, states “several large music festivals will be produced and streamed live and exclusively on the MCNENTERTAINMENT ... and the MCN.TV Broadband Network.” It also quotes Brunet as saying: “The first two Music Festivals will be streamed Live from Lexington, KY, and Phoenix, AZ, and will feature very well known artists. The dates will be announced at a later time, but they will be held between the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015.”
Another news release on the company’s website, dated May 21, 2013, said: “Global Broadband Network MCN.TV announces that the New Broadband Websites and App’s will be introduced by MCN. TV, MCNSPORTS.TV and MCNENTERTAINMENT.TV shortly.”
In that release, Brunet is quoted as saying, “We have been working very hard on delivering our new network application and look forward to showcasing our newest product very shortly.”
It’s not clear if the festivals were eventually broadcast online as announced. No further news releases were posted to the company’s website detailing any contracts or specifying which events would be broadcast or when they would be streaming. People who invested in the company and spoke to this newspaper say they know of no apps or additional websites that were released.
However, it appears that at one point in 2011, MCN may have been getting some traction. It appears the firm did produce some content it made available online. In an email, Bill Vargus, a former sports news broadcaster in Philadelphia, said he was contracted by MCN to film 10 online boxing shows for the company under the title Bill’s Boxing Beat in 2011.
According to a news release on MCN’s website dated Oct. 7, 2011, Bill’s Boxing Beat would be a weekly show taped at the “world renown Sullivan’s Steakhouse located in the King of Prussia, PA.” But, according to Vargus, that never happened.
“I got a deal with John L. Sullivan steak house in King of Prussia. I don’t recall ever actually doing the show from there, though. I think it fell through. Marc (Brunet) may have advertised it on the website because the manager at Sullivan’s had agreed to do it, he just never followed through,” Vargus said.
Vargus said he did film about 10 episodes of the show, which featured local boxers in matches that occurred weekly at the Dover Downs Casino in Dover, Del. He stopped working with MCN after the last taping.
The company also had some clients. According to Kimberly Allen, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the university’s athletic department had a contract with MCN for a time.
“According to information from MIT’s Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation, there was a webcasting agreement between MIT and MultiCast Networks to broadcast MIT home athletic events through an on-demand video service,” she said. “The contract was signed on Nov. 8, 2007, and ended on Oct. 9, 2008. After this contract, MIT Athletics came to an agreement with a new streaming provider.”
Allen would not say why the contract was terminated or how many events MCN streamed for the school.
The online shows, big-name contracts, as well as numerous promises in the company’s news releases about new business, all posted to the firm’s website, were catching some people’s attention.
Potential investors were presented with a “Corporate Business Plan” for MCN and urged to invest in the firm quickly.
The plan said that MCN was “leading an emerging revolution as to how the internet can be used to cost effectively produce, stream and distribute sporting events and sports-related content ... Simply, MCNSPORTS is focused on being the first and largest 24-hour, internet-based broadband sports network.”
The document also said that Brunet, who worked as a detective with Ottawa Police Service until he left in 2001, “was a key figure in pioneering technology for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV ) and was one of the first in streaming major sporting events to the internet.”
It contained impressive financial projections. MCN was expected to bring in $16.9 million in sales revenues and would turn a net profit of $9.27 million in 2013, the year Dowich invested in the firm. The forecast was a big jump over the $2.54 million in sales and $582,469 the company “projected” it had ended 2012 with.
The document projected that by 2015 MCN’s sales would hit $125.63 million and net profits would be around $64 million.
This was no easy market to dominate. YouTube was founded in 2005. By 2010, it had announced a deal to stream the entire cricket season of the Indian Premier League, and by 2010 it had signed an agreement with Major League Baseball to stream games online. MCN’s competition would have been fierce.
To impress potential investors, the Ottawa-based businessman offered some people tours of New Castle, Del., according to investors who met with this newspaper; New Castle is about a 40-minute drive away from where MCN has said its corporate headquarters were located. According to the company’s website, MCN has its corporate head offices at 1131 North Dupont Hwy., Dover, Del.
But tracking down MCN’s history isn’t easy.
That address belongs to the Dover Downs Hotel & Casino, which is where MCN filmed Bill’s Boxing Beat.
Officials at the casino said the property is divided into a horseracing track and a stock car racing track. A 2009 contract that Brunet provided to potential investors indicated that MCN had a three-year agreement to stream sports from the casino. Part of that agreement said the company would get an office on the property.
When contacted, officials with Dover Downs did not comment on MCN’s past presence. They said they had no knowledge of MCN still being on the premises.
“We have no relationship with MCN at all,” said Ann Stack, a spokeswoman for the casino.
The business plan used to solicit investment claims that MCN’s “World Headquarters” is located at 1000 N West St., suite 1200, Wilmington, Del. The address is different from the one posted on the company’s website. The address also belongs to a company called Regus PLC, which offers virtual office space to corporations that want to have a Delaware office presence in order to take advantage of the state’s tax and corporate policies. Virtual addresses can be bought for less than $100 per month.
Several people who invested in MCN, including Dowich, say they were given a copy of a commemorative edition of The Fourth Period Magazine, a well-known hockey magazine.
But that magazine isn’t quite the reassuring token some might take it as.
Brunet had entered into an agreement late in 2006 to purchase the magazine. That deal resulted in the commemorative edition announcing the “launch of the new publication.”
The issue said that The Fourth Period Magazine had become a “subsidiary of MCNSports Inc. and MultiCast Networks Holdings Inc.” The magazine promised bleeding edge articles on the NHL which would be written by a dedicated staff of writers.
However, according to David Pagnotta, publisher and president of TFP Media Inc., which owns The Fourth Period, the deal with Brunet didn’t last long. Pagnotta said the deal was cancelled less than two months after it was negotiated.
MCN was listed on the GXG Markets, a controversial European stock exchange used for trading in small-value companies, under the ticker symbol “MCNS” on April 27, 2012.
I went to him. I was hearing all these great things. My money was going to go toward my daughter’s education.
A total of 40 million shares were outstanding. One trade was completed on May 11, 2012, when 500 shares in MCN were sold for $1 per share. The company was de-listed by the exchange shortly afterward, according to documents provided by investors.
The exchange was plagued with controversy because it was incredibly easy for companies to obtain a listing. There are reports that several companies that did list on the exchange did so in contravention of the exchange’s own rules. There was a formal investigation launched into the exchange’s operations by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (the FSA) in 2014.
The exchange operated between 1998 and 2015, when it surrendered its operating licence and ceased operations.
Dowich said he ended up giving Brunet $5,000. Dowich said Brunet asked for a cheque to be made out to his wife, Helene. The request for payments to be made to Helene was something others who invested in the firm also described.
For his $5,000 investment, Dowich was presented with a certificate saying that he is the registered owner of 20,000 shares in MultiCast Networks. The certificate was dated Aug. 19, 2013. The certificate said the shares were “subject to the Canada Business Corporations Act.” It also had an embossed gold seal in the bottom left corner with the company ’s name and the words “Canada Corporation” displayed prominently.
However, MCN had been issued a certificate of dissolution from Industry Canada in 2011. There are no records of the company applying to have the company revived as a registered business with Industry Canada, which would mean that after it was dissolved, it ceased to be a legally operating entity.
Components of the MCN documents given to Dowich raise further questions, including about the endorsements MCN has touted.
The business plan Dowich says he was given in August 2013 contains a list of members of the company ’s board of directors as well as an “advisory board,” which typically is a group of people who are available to offer the board advice but do not vote on corporate matters or bear any legal fiduciary responsibility regarding the corporation.
MCN’s board of directors included only Brunet, according to the document. However, the document said the advisory board includes extremely well-known business people such John (Jack) Kelly, who was affiliated with Turner Broadcasting ’s Wide World of Sports and was deeply entrenched in the sports and sports broadcasting communities in the United States; Robert Block, a founder of several technology companies in the U.S., with extensive experience in the communications and entertainment industries; and Montreal Canadiens hall of famer Yvan Cournoyer.
While Brunet and Cournoyer have publicly socialized, when shown the documents asserting his relationship with MCN, the hockey icon replied to this newspaper: “Please be informed. I am not involved with this company.”
Kelly, meanwhile, died in July 2013 after a two-year battle with cancer. A eulogy posted online did mention that he was working with a firm when he died.
Kelly died a month before Dowich said he was presented with the document to secure his investment. Others in the group claimed the business plan was still being circulated to potential investors as late as 2016.
When reached by phone, Block didn’t deny being involved with MCN but also couldn’t recall working with the company.
“Understand this, I am 90 years old and I don’t have a good memory for some things,” he said. “I try to help startups and people I think are doing something worth doing. I don’t want to bury them, but I don’t remember the details.”
The document also contained undated testimonials in the company and its abilities.
One such testimonial written by a person named Stephen Hobbs, a media director at a Toronto firm named Brandworks International, stated: “MCNSPORTS worked tremendously well as part of our overall strategy and got our Glenfiddich message to precisely the right target.”
When reached by this newspaper, Hobbs could not recall writing the letter or working with scotch malt maker Glenfiddich.
Another Stephen Hobbs who is a senior content strategist with a marketing firm in the U.K. was involved with Glenfiddich around the 2010-11 time frame. Hobbs has never worked in Canada and said he didn’t write the letter supporting MCN. He did say he was involved in sending out mass messages globally with marketing pitches on behalf of the brand.
“I was emailing scores of random internet guys with an official pitch from Glenfiddich,” he said to this newspaper. “I would have been easy to find.”
Looking back now, Dowich and others who invested in the firm wish they’d kept their money in their wallets.
Still, they say that rather than hiding from them and the charges he faces, Brunet is keeping up his regular routine and even attending hockey on a weekly basis.
“I saw him a couple (of ) weeks ago. He asked me, ‘Are we good?’ and I said, ‘Is my money safe?’ He said, ‘Yeah!’ ” said Dowich. “He always has an answer.”
The charges brought against the Brunets have been laid by the Ontario Securities Commission’s Joint Serious Offences Team, a partnership between the OSC, the RCMP’s Financial Crime program and the OPP’s Anti-Rackets Branch. In a release, police say the Brunets formerly lived in Kenmore, Ont. They encourage anyone who may have been solicited by the couple to contact 1-877-785-1555.
The Brunets’ next court appearance is set for April 3.