A North Shore con man who bilked nine people out of $625,000 in an investment scam will be allowed to serve a two-year sentence in his own home, a B.C. Supreme Court justice has ruled.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen handed down the sentence June 1 to Adam Keller, 27, saying that arrangement would allow Keller to continue working on lucrative employment contracts that will enable him to pay back his victims.
Keller’s relatively young age was also a factor, said the judge.
Keller was just 19 when he arrived in West Vancouver in 2009 and began swindling his victims out of significant sums of money.
In a saga worthy of a movie plot, prosecutor Kevin Marks described how Keller pulled off his get-rich scheme by passing himself off as a wealthy foreign exchange currency trader who could make significant returns on investment for his clients.
Over the 18 months he ran the fraud, Keller told those he scammed that their initial investments were guaranteed by his company and that they were making big returns, said Marks.
One West Vancouver woman lost over $341,000 after falling for 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.
None of the money handed over to Keller by his victims 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 moved to the United States. He was deported back to Canada in December 2013.
The Crown prosecutor asked the judge to send Keller to jail for three years. But the judge opted instead to let him serve his sentence in the community.
As part of the sentence, Cullen ordered Keller to pay back the money he took at $10,000 a month, through income his lawyer said he expects to make working for high tech start-up companies.
Sentencing was delayed for two weeks in May after the prosecutor asked for time to verify Keller’s employment contracts. Those were eventually found to be legitimate, but as a result of police enquiries, Keller was let go from at least one contract, said his defence lawyer Doug Jevning.
The first year of Keller’s sentence will be served under house arrest. During that time, Keller must not engage in any activity seeking money for investment, said Cullen, and must hand over his monthly bank account and income statements to his sentence supervisor. He must also complete 120 hours of community work service.
In the second year of his conditional sentence order, Keller must obey a curfew. Following the sentence, Keller will be put on three years’ probation, with similar conditions to report his income and employment details to authorities and to pay back the money he took.
