A Stephenville Crossing man has been convicted of offences related to his involvement in a so-called romance scam in 2016.
Thomas Stanley Craig Young, 51, fought the charges against him at a trial heard before Justice George Murphy in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in Corner Brook last fall, but was found guilty in a decision rendered by the judge last week.
The five charges involved a single count of defrauding the Bank of Montreal in Stephenville by depositing a fraudulent cheque in the amount of $75,360, along with four counts of possessing property obtained by crime.
The property included two snowmobiles, an all-terrain vehicle and a pickup truck purchased with the fraudulently obtained money.
Young’s defence was that he took the cheque to the bank not knowing if it was legitimate or not, believing the bank would not accept it or allow him to withdraw any of the money if it was bogus.
His troubles all started when he began communicating with someone via social media in 2015. Young believed the person to be a woman named Nino.
In a transcript of their initial conversations on Facebook, which was provided to the court, Nino indicated she travels the world on a crude oil ship and expressed an interest in developing a relationship with Young and moving to Stephenville.
She told him she was owed a cheque from her employer and wanted Young to deposit it in his account and send the money to her. She also told him a person named Gary Smith was responsible for issuing the cheque and would be in touch with Young.
About two months later, Young did receive the cheque made payable to him, which he brought to the Bank of Montreal in Stephenville.
“The accused ought to have been very suspicious about this cheque, given the circumstances in which it came into his possession,” Murphy said in his written decision on the case.
He said Young, who indicated in subsequent police statements he was suspicious of the cheque and even asked Nino if it was legitimate during their Facebook exchanges, made no attempt to actually verify its legitimacy after he received it.
“(Young) decided to bring the cheque to the bank to see if it would clear or not, without saying a word about his suspicions or the unusual manner in which he came into possession of the cheque,” wrote Murphy, describing Young’s actions as willful blindness to the crime he was likely committing.
The bank’s customer service representative did not detect that the cheque was fraudulent and, for some reason, did not follow the normal bank practice of putting a hold on the cheque prior to allowing funds from that cheque to be withdrawn.
Young argued that he used his own money to buy the ATV, the truck and one of the snowmobiles that were seized as a result of the investigation. He indicated it was actually his son who had bought the second snowmobile confiscated by police.
He said it was mere coincidence that those items were all bought within days of cashing the fraudulent cheque.
Murphy did not buy this story after analyzing Young’s banking records, saying there was no way he had enough savings to make all those purchases.
The judge ruled Young was most likely trying to turn the tables on Nino and White by spending the money from the cheque instead of sending it to Nino as requested by the scammers.
Young will be back in court for a sentencing hearing March 15.
