Accused fraudster may seek fresh bail hearing
Three weeks after a judge shot down his first attempt, Loren Reagan looks set to apply for bail again.
The 56-year-old’s lawyer told a pre-trial conference Wednesday in B.C. Supreme Court he will be seeking a review of the March 13 decision to deny Reagan bail.
Reagan represented himself at the first hearing, but a publication ban was imposed covering the evidence put forward and the reasons for the judge’s decision.
No date has been set for the review application, and Reagan remains behind bars at the Okanagan Correction Centre awaiting trial on three charges related in part to the Penticton hockey dormitory fiasco.
Reagan was arrested March 4 in Calgary on a Canada-wide warrant issued in September 2017, when he failed to show up for his original trial. He was subject to an earlier bail order at the time.
The trial went ahead, however, for coaccused Michael Elphicke, who was convicted on charges of fraud over $5,000, theft over $5,000 and unauthorized management of a lottery scheme. Elphicke is due to be sentenced April 23.
Reagan faces an identical set of charges and it appears his three-week trial will hear from many of the same witnesses, including hockey parents, a forensic auditor, police and Anthony Haddad, the City of Penticton’s director of development service.
Elphicke’s trial heard how he and Reagan created the Okanagan Elite Hockey Association in 2010, ostensibly to send teenaged hockey players and their parents on a European tour.
However, most of the funds raised and contributed by parents were used by Reagan and Elphicke for personal expenses, and to start construction of the ill-fated Eckhardt Avenue hockey dorm, according to testimony from the forensic auditor.
Reagan is tentatively due back in court April 30 to set a date for the trial.