Greed strikes again – three year sentence for abhorrent advisor.
Investment manager Keith Summers was sentenced to three years is jail yesterday after he pleaded guilty to a series of fraud offences involving forged documents, ETFs and more than $2 million in investor losses.
The Ontario judge handed down the term after Summers admitted he had overstated assets under management while operating ETFs at Tricoastal Capital Partners and had falsified a number of documents in order to hide millions of dollars in losses from unsuspecting investors.
Summers, who ran both Tricoastal Capital Partners and Tricoastal Capital Management Ltd., eventually realized the gravity of his predicament and reported his own illegal activities to the OSC in early 2014. An investigation was launched by OSC’s Joint Serious Offences Team (JSOT), comprised of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police financial crime program, the Ontario Provincial Police anti-rackets branch and the Ontario Securities Commission and Summers was finally charged in March of this year.
Justice Sheila Ray of the Ontario Court ordered Summers to pay the equivalent of $4.3 million in compensation to his ex-clients, on top of the $1.4 million he had previously forfeited when his Tricoastal accounts were shut down.
Summers started his own fund after he lost his job in the midst of the financial crisis and said the lies all began when he found it difficult to convince clients to invest in a tiny fund with minimal assets. As the losses mounted, the lies increased but WP doesn’t have much sympathy as it was also revealed that in the run up to Summers’ unconvincing contrition, he withdrew almost $1-million of investors’ money to pay his personal expenses.
Summers has since agreed to a permanent ban from trading securities in Ontario and a permanent ban from working in the financial industry.
The Ontario judge handed down the term after Summers admitted he had overstated assets under management while operating ETFs at Tricoastal Capital Partners and had falsified a number of documents in order to hide millions of dollars in losses from unsuspecting investors.
Summers, who ran both Tricoastal Capital Partners and Tricoastal Capital Management Ltd., eventually realized the gravity of his predicament and reported his own illegal activities to the OSC in early 2014. An investigation was launched by OSC’s Joint Serious Offences Team (JSOT), comprised of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police financial crime program, the Ontario Provincial Police anti-rackets branch and the Ontario Securities Commission and Summers was finally charged in March of this year.
Justice Sheila Ray of the Ontario Court ordered Summers to pay the equivalent of $4.3 million in compensation to his ex-clients, on top of the $1.4 million he had previously forfeited when his Tricoastal accounts were shut down.
Summers started his own fund after he lost his job in the midst of the financial crisis and said the lies all began when he found it difficult to convince clients to invest in a tiny fund with minimal assets. As the losses mounted, the lies increased but WP doesn’t have much sympathy as it was also revealed that in the run up to Summers’ unconvincing contrition, he withdrew almost $1-million of investors’ money to pay his personal expenses.
Summers has since agreed to a permanent ban from trading securities in Ontario and a permanent ban from working in the financial industry.
