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Convicted con artist Arnold Breitkreutz received a 10-year prison sentence Friday for defrauding investors of more than $21 million in a massive Ponzi scheme.
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Calgary Queen’s Court Judge Colin Feasby said there were many aggravating factors that warranted a sentence in the 10- to 12-year range sought by Crown Prosecutor Shelley Smith.
Defense attorney Cale Ellis-Toddington had proposed a seven-and-a-half-year term.
“The fraud was deliberate, on a large scale, and profoundly affected the lives of many victims,” Feasby said.
Convicting Breitkreutz in June, the judge noted that the losses Breitkreutz, 74, created for investors in his Base Finance Ltd. exceeded $100 million, but the indictment only focused on a specific period of his operation.
He noted that the charge period from May 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015 was the last 17 months of Base Finance’s decades of existence.
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“Only the number of victims, more than 100, and the money lost during the indictment period, more than 21 million dollars, have been considered,” he said.
But Feasby said even those numbers made the Breitkreutz crime significant.
“The large amount of money involved, the large number of victims, the breach of trust and the complexity of the fraud all weigh in favor of a lengthy sentence.”
He said the impact the crime had on its victims was profound.
“One of the most insidious effects of Mr. Breitkreutz’s fraud on the victims was that it robbed them of their faith and trust in others,” the judge said.
“Our society depends on faith and trust in our fellow human beings. Mr. Breitkreutz took advantage of that and now his victims understandably have a hard time trusting others.”
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One of the mitigating factors raised by Ellis-Toddington in seeking a lesser sentence was her client’s advanced age.
But Feasby said that could only be considered in a limited way, noting that one case suggested judges should not impose fixed terms on offenders who exceed their life expectancy.
But he cited figures from Statistics Canada that show the average 75-year-old Canadian man has a life expectancy of 10.2 years.
“I conclude that 10.2 years marks the upper limit of the sentence range that I can impose,” Feasby said.
He also said reducing a sentence because of an offender’s advanced age would send the wrong message to would-be perpetrators.
“An elderly fraudster who knows that age is a mitigating factor in sentencing will consider that fact as part of the cost-benefit analysis of perpetrating the fraud,” he said.
“That is especially problematic because, as in the present case, older fraudsters are well positioned to victimize their peers. The greatest effect of Mr. Breitkreutz’s fraud was to impose emotional and financial hardship on the victims of him during his last years.”
Along with the prison sentence, Breitkreutz was ordered to make restitution of more than $3.1 million, but that would only be paid if he was found to have stashed cash.
On Twitter: @KMartinCourts
