Crown seeks five-year sentence for Edmonton man guilty of fraud
A fraudster who conned an Edmonton woman out of her life savings should serve five years in prison and be made to pay restitution, Crown prosecutors say.
Ross Vincent Bayne was in the Court of King's Bench for sentencing Thursday. Alongside co-accused Mary Cooney, Bayne was convicted of defrauding Beatrijs Penn of $340,000 under the guise of loans for humanitarian projects.
While Bayne portrayed himself as a savvy international businessman with a plan to change philanthropic financing, prosecutors said he was in fact a handyman and landscaper who used Penn's money to cover his personal expenses.
Cooney and Penn met in 2013 as members of the John de Ruiter spiritual group. An immigrant from the Netherlands, Penn told Cooney she recovered from terminal cancer through “natural” Ayurvedic treatments. She mentioned loaning money to an Ayurvedic college, who she sued to recover around 400,000 euros when she was not repaid.
Cooney told Penn she knew someone who could help her invest that money in humanitarian projects. She introduced her to Bayne, who claimed he had an idea for a “process” to fund farming, clean water and sustainable housing projects in the developing world “without leaving this heavy debt burden on those who could least afford it.”
Penn ultimately contributed $343,000 to the so-called “Grace Endowment” between 2013 and 2017. In reality, the endowment was Cooney's bank account. Cooney took 10 per cent as an “administrative fee.”
At trial, Bayne's lawyers claimed he was not guilty of fraud and that Penn had simply invested in a business project that didn't bear fruit.
Justice Shaina Leonard, however, concluded there was no evidence Bayne had done anything other than spend Penn's money.
“I do not believe these projects existed,” she said. “If someone is engaging businesspeople on the international stage to invest millions of dollars, there would be a paper trail of some sort or some sort of corroboration. None was put into evidence.”
Prosecutors Julie Snowdon and Aaron Rankin said a five-year prison sentence is needed to denounce and deter Bayne's crimes. They are seeking nine months in jail for Cooney along with a restitution order for her share of the funds.
“Both offenders showed a selfish and indeed greedy willingness to exploit another, seemingly caring nothing for the predictable outcome on the victim — shame and self-recrimination; a profound sense of betrayal; and the fate of living out her life, if not in poverty, then in circumstances greatly straitened compared to the comforts that her savings should have afforded her,” the Crown wrote.
“Fraud is a bloodless crime, but it is committed in cold blood.”
Steven Fix, Bayne's lawyer, is seeking 18 months to two years.
“Mr. Bayne was not held out as a financial adviser or any form of investment specialist. He represented himself only as one who believed in an alternate way to secure funding for projects and the complainant agreed to lend money on that basis.”
“There was no complex scheme devised to deprive Ms. Penn of her funds. It was a simple lending agreement lacking repayment terms.”
Cooney, meanwhile, is seeking a conditional sentence order of just under two years, followed by three years of probation. Defence lawyer Marshall Hopkins said his client is sole caregiver to a man with a serious skin condition, which improved only after Cooney's research into nutrition and meal planning. He said Cooney's success could be the “foundation for a business preparing and selling food which will assist individuals with certain sorts of physical ailments,” allowing her to repay Penn within five years.
Leonard is expected to give her decision May 30.