A man has been sentenced to three years in prison for stealing nearly US$1 million from investors, the B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) said Wednesday.
In a release, the regulator said Ward Derek Jensen acquired US$971,586 from nine investors between 2007 and 2017, promising to invest their money in a private fund purportedly held at a Chicago firm and administered through his B.C. company, Kassel Enterprises.
But the regulator said neither Jensen nor his company were registered to trade securities as required by B.C.’s Securities Act, nor did they qualify for any exemptions.
Jensen told investors he could generate annual returns of 14%–18% with their money. Instead, the BCSC said, he used the investors’ funds for his personal use and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock trades through his own personal brokerage account.
The regulator also said Jensen gave his victims forged monthly statements, which falsely showed their investments growing over time. His banking records, however, showed that he rarely had enough money to return the investors’ principal investments, let alone the promised gains.
When one investor asked to withdraw some of her money, Jensen lied and said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had frozen the funds in his account, the BCSC said.
Following a criminal investigation by the BCSC, Jensen was sentenced to three years in prison on Aug. 16 in North Vancouver Provincial Court after previously pleading guilty to one count of theft over $5,000.
The court also ordered Jensen to pay US$900,534 in restitution to his victims for their financial losses.