B.C. Supreme Court and Court of Appeal in Vancouver. (Tom Zytaruk/Surrey Now-Leader)
Two B.C. men allegedly behind a multi-million dollar fraud scheme in the United States have seen another delay in Canadian court proceedings, leaving them still free on bail years after they were first charged.
Curtis Lehner and Courtney “Court” Vasseur were charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, multiple counts of securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the United States, the result of an FBI investigation.
Along with co-accused German-Turkish citizen Hasan Sario, and Domenic Calabrigo – a Canadian living in the Bahamas – the FBI claimed that the four men conspired to run a string of “pump-and-dump” stock frauds.
Vasseur has been identified by B.C.’s anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit as a Hells Angel, and a member of the elite Nomads chapter. He was an employee of Langley-based Aggressive Roadbuilding in the 2000s, when its owner and a top employee committed a $6 million bank fraud that resulted in guilty pleas; the convicted former owner denied Vasseur had anything to do with the crime in an interview with the Langley Advance Times.
Lehner worked for the Eron Mortgage Corporation in the 1990s, before it collapsed amid fraud investigations and charges against top company officials. About 3,200 investors lost $170 million, but Lehner was not charged in the case.
Neither man has ever been convicted of a crime in British Columbia. People charged with a crime are considered not guilty until proven otherwise in a court of law.
A pump-and-dump scheme involves gaining control over a large amount of the stock of a low-value company, artificially hyping its value, often through fraudulent online promotion and press releases, then selling the stock off at an inflated price. In such schemes, the price of the stock then craters, leaving the new buyers of the stock to face the losses.
According to a U.S. Justice Department indictment issued in the spring 2022, the four suspects collected proceeds of $35 million from the scheme. A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) action filed the same year set the number at $39 million in allegedly illicit profits.
According to the indictment, Lehner’s nickname was “Santa” while Vasseur had various aliases including “Black Water,” “Cyrill Vetsch,” “Arctic Shark,” and “Oscar Devries.”
Since charges were announced on April 14, 2022, the extradition process against Vasseur and Lehner has moved slowly.
The two men went to court for their extradition hearing in the fall and winter of 2023, and the judge ruled they should be extradited in January of 2024.
Both men appealed, and appeal hearings have been scheduled several times, but each time they have been cancelled.
This year, Lehner and Vasseur were expected to be in court for appeals in early May, then in September, then November.
The most recent dates, Nov. 18 for Lehner and Nov. 21 for Vasseur, were taken off the schedule according to Court of Appeal court registry staff in Vancouver.
No new dates have yet been scheduled for the appeal hearing, which was scheduled to take just two hours.
An application to vary Vasseur’s bail conditions has been filed, to be heard Nov. 25.
No new hearings are expected to be scheduled until after Dec. 3 at the earliest.
Next spring will mark four years since they have been charged in the United States.
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