Earl Lawery Matthews and Reyanne Briand have been found guilty of fraud. (CBC)A judge in southern Newfoundland has convicted a couple of defrauding unsuspecting investors of hundreds of thousands of dollars through a website that even suggested the pair were fighting poverty.
Earl Lawery Matthews, a U.S. citizen, and Reyanne Briand, a Canadian, were found guilty in Grand Bank of fraud and possession of criminally obtained property.
Judge Harold Porter found the couple had founded a web-based business called Aid4Families.com, which included vaguely written promises that suggested investors could earn healthy returns on their investments.
In a written decision released Wednesday, Porter lashed out at Matthews and Briand, who had settled on Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula after starting their business in Quebec, as manipulating their clients with concocted promises of what investors could expect.
"These claims, all of them false, were made in order to induce potential 'investors' to believe that Aid4Families.com was a stable, reliable, and ethical institution. Aid4Families.com was neither of these: it was instead a means by which the accused sought to deprive the naive of their funds," Porter wrote.
"The Aid4Families.com website is replete with exaggeration, false promise, and plain lies. It provides ample evidence of dishonest and discreditable behaviour on the part of the defendants."
The website is no longer active.
Porter found that the couple used aliases, and exhibited an ongoing pattern of deception in dealing with customers.
A police investigation was launched after investors in the U.S. reported problems. In one case, a couple had invested almost $350,000, expecting a high rate of return. Porter noted that the couple used language on their site that indicated a high rate of return, such as 25 per cent, but which had no legal meaning.
Porter found that Matthews and Briand also pulled on clients' heartstrings to gain their trust.
"Perhaps the lowest form of deceit found on the website is the claim that Aid4Families.com had opened a 'charitable branch,' " he wrote, adding they used "pictures of happy, smiling children" to promote their cause.
He said the pair promised to use one per cent of profits "to resolve problems like hunger (irrigation, sanitation, roads and greenhouses), poverty (financial grants for business and education), train and pay the homeless and poor to be dispatched around the world, and build homes that respect the traditional culture and meets modern needs."
Later, in his judgment, Porter concluded, "On the contrary, the only persons who might have benefited from those operations were the accused, and they did not loan one cent to anybody."
Porter said he would sentence Matthews and Briand at a later date.
