A panel of the Alberta Securities Commission has issued permanent sanctions against a mutual fund salesperson who falsified client documents and misappropriated client funds.

Sanctions include a cease trade order, denial of all exemptions under Alberta securities laws, and a lifetime prohibition from acting as a director or officer of any company.

In its decision, the ASC also ordered Stewart Showers to pay $10,000 towards costs of the ASC investigation, and the panel allowed that certain trades will be permitted to Showers in limited circumstances.

“Showers deceived mutual fund clients as to the performance of their accounts. He extracted money from some of his clients and reapplied much of that money to the accounts of other clients to sustain the deception,” said a panel of the ASC in its decision. “He took deliberate and rather elaborate steps to effect and sustain the distortions, and to conceal what he had done.”

These sanctions are in addition to a fraud conviction in criminal court against Showers in February 2004, related to the same circumstances, where he received a conditional sentence of two years less a day, plus one year probation and was ordered to pay over $280,000 as restitution.