A young North Shore confidence man was still a teenager when he embarked on a scam worthy of the Catch Me If You Can movie plot.
Eventually authorities did catch up with Adam Alexander Keller – but not before he’d bilked nine people out of $625,000.
Now the fate of the smooth-talking con man will be determined by a B.C. Supreme Court justice.
Keller, 27, is being sentenced after pleading guilty in November to one count of fraud over $5,000.
But as Crown prosecutor Kevin Marks described in court Wednesday, the amount Keller swindled out of victims in both West Vancouver and Alberta was far higher.
Marks urged B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen to send the fraudster to jail for three years, arguing Keller deliberately set out to win the trust of his victims before taking their money. Marks told the judge Keller pulled off his get-rich scheme by passing himself off as a wealthy stock market trader “well versed in foreign exchange currency trading” who could make significant returns on investment for his clients.
Over the 18 months he ran the fraud, starting in February 2009, Keller told those he bilked that their initial investments were guaranteed by his company and that “their investments were making remarkable returns,” said Marks. He also provided his “clients” with signed contracts and with investment summaries “which were made up,” said Marks. “He would sign anything in order to get the monies from these individuals.”
None of the money handed over to Keller was ever invested, said Marks. Instead, Keller used the money to pay his rent and his credit card bills as well as transferring several hundred thousand dollars to his girlfriend, said the prosecutor. By the time Keller’s clients started asking for their money back, Keller had skipped the country.
Marks told the judge Keller began scamming people with the limo driver who picked him up from the airport, chatting about his fictitious life as a day trader for a foreign currency exchange. Soon the driver handed over a cheque.
His next victim – a West Vancouver woman who knew the driver – was the biggest loser in the fraud, handing over $341,000 in six different cheques as a result of Keller’s smooth talk. Keller assured the woman her money was safe and her investment had grown to more than $1 million. But none of that was true.
In the interim, Keller swindled additional money from her friends and family members. Others Keller hustled included four promoters of penny stock ventures who hoped Keller would invest in their companies. But Keller quickly turned the tables on them, said Marks.
By the summer of 2010, all of Keller’s investors were trying to contact him, said Marks, but Keller moved to the United States before an investigation was launched. Criminal charges were eventually laid in August 2012 and Keller made his way back onto police radar after running into trouble with the law in Colorado. He was deported back to Canada in December 2013 after serving time in jail.
Marks told the judge Keller’s victims were left humiliated. In the case of the woman who lost the most money, Keller’s actions left her financially devastated, said Marks. “She lost her life savings,” he said.
Defence lawyer Doug Jevning urged a more lenient sentence for Keller to be served under house arrest. Jevning said Keller has been steadily employed as a home-based software engineer and argued letting Keller serve a sentence at home would allow him to earn money to pay back his victims. The judge said before he made a decision he would need to see more proof of Keller’s work contracts. Sentencing has been adjourned until May 11.
