The ringleader of a fraud scheme that bilked several Lower Mainland banks — including three on the North Shore — out of $1.3 million will spend another two years in jail on top of two years he’s already spent in prison, a B.C. Supreme Court justice ruled Friday.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman handed down the sentence to Robert Irama, 43, who pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud over $5,000 and one count of money laundering. Silverman also ordered Irama to pay back nearly $700,000 to five different banks and investment companies.
At a sentencing hearing Thursday, Crown counsel John Neal described Irama as the mastermind of an operation that deposited stolen commercial cheques for large amounts of money into accounts set up with the aid of phony corporate documents.
The fraud took place over 11 separate incidents between August 2011 and October 2012. Typically, Irama recruited other people, who he referred to as “soldiers,” to front the transactions by setting up the bank accounts with fake corporate documents and depositing the cheques. Irama would then withdraw the money or direct his associates to move it. Transactions occurred at the Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank and Toronto Dominion in North Vancouver.
“In several cases the money was moved offshore,” to accounts in China, Switzerland, Spain and Uganda, said Neal.
“He orchestrated these frauds,” said Neal, adding Irama’s role as the criminal mastermind was borne out by cellphone texts and email messages recovered when police seized his computer and several cellphones after he was arrested at the airport in July 2012. Another computer was seized from his condo after police searched it under warrant.
In several text messages, Irama gave instructions to his front men about exactly what to say to bank employees and made notes on his phone, recording bank account information.
In one case, he advised an associate who got nervous after she was contacted by police investigators, “Never go to see any cop. Hire a lawyer instead and tell the cop they’ll have to talk to the lawyer.”
In another instance, he sent angry messages to a woman who refused to become part of the fraud scheme for fear she would go to jail. “I’ve done this for long and no one has ever gone to jail,” Irama wrote.
Neal told the judge Irama has two previous convictions for fraud and two convictions for attempted fraud between 1999 and 2001.
Irama was also sentenced Friday for charges of forgery and obstruction of justice laid after he faked documents that he used while seeking a pardon for those earlier fraud convictions.
While some of the money taken in the fraud was returned, over $700,000 is still unaccounted for.
