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Help Senior Recover Stolen Savings

Link to Globe and Mail article on this story:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/retirement/retire-working-in-retirement/how-investment-fraud-forced-a-retired-teacher-into-a-second-career/article28365973/

I am Warren Mills, a 70 year old man who lives in Toronto, Canada. I spent most of my career as a Christian missionary and English teacher in China and Canada. In China I taught students in Beijing. In Canada I have taught English to mainly construction and factory workers injured on the job. These people needed to learn to speak and write English to get a different job. It was a blessing to be able to help them. I am also a widower who has spent most of his adult life as a single parent raising my son, Sean, who is now 30 years of age and studying in university.

My story is that I have lost my retirement savings to a scam artist, who was an accountant and the Chief Financial Officer of my Church. If I don’t get some of this money back, I will always have to work to pay for rent and food until I am too old to keep going.

In 2008, when I was 62 years of age and teaching, I met a charismatic young man who was the accountant and Financial Officer of my church. He was acting as a mentor to my son at the time and so was considered a family friend. He told me he was an expert in stock investments and offered to manage my retirement investments. It sounded like a real opportunity. Because of his trusted position in the church, I gave him my retirement savings to invest, about $200,000. In 2009 he started to issue me financial statements of how these investments were doing. Everything seemed fine, but little did I know what was actually going on.

In 2012, at age 66, I decided to retire from being an English teacher and missionary.
I believed I had a comfortable amount of money saved for my retirement. According to the financial statements I was getting from this young accountant, I thought I had about $250,000.

The following year, in April 2013, I had a stroke, and my right side was nearly paralyzed. I couldn't move my right hand or arm and could not walk without help. It was a very frightening time, when I didn’t know what the future would bring. But I was determined to get better. In time, with much prayer and effort, the life started to return to my right side. I was slowly healing.

After getting out of the hospital, I made the astonishing discovery that I was a victim of a serious fraud at the hands of this accountant who had been the Chief Financial Officer of my church. I discovered that there was less than $25,000 in the investment account that he had set up and managed for me. He had lost almost all of the money in risky stock investments, in 2008 and 2009, and he had given me 42 false financial statements over 5 years. I was in complete shock and amazement.

I suddenly discovered that I had lost $150,000., almost all of my retirement savings. When confronted, he refused to pay me back and hired lawyers instead. In 2015, he was convicted of fraud by the Ontario Securities Commission, and he lost his accounting licence. He has been given two years of house arrest. But still, I won't get my money back from this man because most of the money he is ordered to pay by the court has no due date attached to it. Without a due date, it will be impossible to enforce. He is required to pay $200 a month for 5 years but that leaves $104,000 which he will not be required to pay at any point in time. This man has shown that he has no integrity and without the threat of jail I know he will never repay me.

At 70 years of age, I have been forced to go back to work as a security guard working long and difficult hours to pay my rent. I have little or no peace and difficulty sleeping at night. My faith in the church has been shattered. I fear greatly for my future and should I get sick and need to be put into a home for the elderly, there is no money to pay the bills. Any help you can give would be a great blessing and I would be very thankful.

You can read the full account of this story in the Globe and Mail article soon to be published.

Organizer

Warren Mills
Organizer
Etobicoke, ON

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