Following what RCMP describe as an “intensive” investigation, Brian Kitts, 65, and Shannon Kitts, 55, from Summerland, B.C., at the moment are charged with fraud over $5,000, theft over $5,000 and cash laundering.
The alleged crimes, which RCMP say resulted within the lack of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for numerous buyers, came about between February 2014 and September 2016 and concerned a number of firms together with Vesta Capcorp Inc. and Vesta Fairness Companions.
The pair will seem in court docket in Calgary subsequent month.
Brian Kitts ‘an unrepentant recidivist,’ securities fee mentioned
In 2019, the Alberta Securities Fee (ASC) issued sanctions in opposition to Brian Kitts and Vesta Capcorp Inc.
Based on a press launch issued by ASC on the time, about 38 buyers misplaced greater than $5 million.
An ASC panel labelled Kitts’ misconduct as “egregious” and located he “deliberate to defraud harmless buyers from the outset.”
The panel additionally discovered Kitts “continued his fraudulent capital-market exercise in Alberta within the face of regulatory sanction and prison proceedings elsewhere” and was “seemingly an unrepentant recidivist.”
Within the prison investigation, RCMP labored with the ASC and FBI amongst others.
“Sadly, the victims sustained substantial losses because of their funding inside the Ponzi scheme they believed to be respectable,” mentioned Insp. Charlene O’Neill, with RCMP’s built-in market enforcement group.
