Appeal Court upholds fraud conviction

Despite insisting he’s a “humanitarian” and not a criminal, the creator of Master Keys to Success lost an appeal of his convictions for fraud and money laundering.

“I can’t see a thing I would have done different,” Steven Vincent Weeres told the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal during arguments on Friday.

He later added his only intention was to help people — but his plans for a computer training program have instead cost him years behind bars and cost his victims hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Regina judge who convicted him more than two years ago concluded he acted out of greed and to help himself to other people’s money. The Appeal Court found no reason to overturn the verdict.

“We can find no merit to the grounds of your appeal. In our view, the trial judge did not commit any factual or legal error,” said Justice Jacelyn Ryan-Froslie.

Weeres, 59, was sentenced in October 2015 to five years in prison for fraud and money laundering — less 505 days’ credit for pre-trial custody. He must serve two more years if he fails to pay a $200,000 fine in lieu of forfeiting the money he laundered. He’s been ordered to pay $482,690 in victim restitution.

Weeres created an interactive, training software program called Master Keys to Success. During his seven-week trial, Saskatchewan residents testified they put thousands of dollars into the business venture, with promises of doubling their money. But Justice Janet McMurtry found Weeres misappropriated $650,000 to $800,000 of that money, spending it on vacations, rent for a beachfront home on Vancouver Island, dining, drinking and gambling.