Provincial regulator targets assets held by fraudster’s wife
Securities Commission files suit in bid to access $12.8 million in local residential properties
The B.C. Securities Commission filed a claim Thursday against Vancouver financial fraudster Earle Douglas Pasquill and his wife to collect millions in penalties and repayments owed by Pasquill.
The suit filed in B.C. Supreme Court is an effort to get access to assets held by Pasquill’s wife Vicki Irene Pasquill — five Vancouver residential properties assessed at $12.8 million.
The suit also names other assets held by Pasquill and his wife, including investments, registered retirement savings plans and motor vehicles, of which the commission stated it does not know the details.
The civil claim alleges Pasquill’s wife — a teacher with an annual salary of $80,000 — would not have been able to buy the properties, pay the mortgages, maintain them and build up equity if she had not received the proceeds of the fraud perpetrated by her husband.
There has not been a response filed in court from Pasquill and/ or his wife.
Pasquill, reached at his home by phone Thursday, declined to speak to this reporter. “I am not here at the moment,” he said and hung up.
The BCSC’s action against the Pasquills is the latest among measures the regulator has taken after a Postmedia News investigation, reported last November, revealed more than half a billion dollars of its penalties had gone uncollected in the past decade. During the period, the collection rate was less than two per cent.
Pasquill was among those highlighted in the Postmedia investigation who had not paid their penalties.
In 2015, Pasquill and Michael Lathigee, who now lives in Las Vegas, were each slapped with a $15-million fine and ordered to pay back $21.7 million raised fraudulently in 2008 from nearly 700 investors.
Ajudicialpanelofthecommission found the pair had raised millions without telling investors that Alberta real estate development projects pitched through their investment club were in serious financial difficulty. The panel also found millions raised to invest in U.S. foreclosures had been redirected to prop up the Alberta real estate developments with unsecured loans. The Postmedia investigation tracked down assets held by financial fraudsters, including five properties held in Pasquill’s wife’s name.
The Pasquills live in a home assessed at $4.35 million in the west side of Vancouver, near the expansive grounds of the private St. George’s boys school. The Postmedia investigation found the home had been in Pasquill’s and his wife Vicki’s names since 1995, but was transferred into Vicki’s sole name in 2000 for $1, according to B.C. Land Titles documents.
The B.C. Securities Commission civil suit filed Thursday highlighted that transfer.
The suit says that the effect of receiving such transfers — and the proceeds of the fraud — would be to defeat, delay or hinder investors and the commission from collecting claims and penalties.
The suit seeks the court to issue certificates of pending litigation against the five properties, under which an owner cannot get a mortgage or sell the property.
The BCSC is also seeking a tracing order to determine what assets were obtained with the proceeds of the fraud.
Among other measures taken by the BCSC are an application filed in a Nevada court to enforce the millions in penalties against Lathigee and 10 writs of seizure and sale filed in B.C. Supreme Court for other financial fraudsters owing nearly $70 million in penalties.
BCSC spokeswoman Pamela McDonald said the commission’s latest legal action had nothing to do with Postmedia’s investigation.
“We develop a unique collections strategy for every case where money is owing. In this case, Mr. Pasquill has not paid what he owes and so we have filed a claim to try to recover that. If we recover any money we will go through the process of getting it back to investors,” said McDonald.