An Alberta Securities Commission panel has permanently banned two men who operated in the Red Deer area from trading in the Alberta capital market for their role in a Mexican investment scheme that took as much as $4 million of Alberta investors’ money.

The ASC panel found that from 2000 to 2004, Larry Kenneth McLeod and Forbes John McLeod encouraged Albertans to invest in Topsis Investments Canada Inc. securities.

According to witnesses, the McLeods led prospective investors to believe that Topsis had contracts to supply a large number (typically 167,801) of prefabricated homes for displaced or low-income families in Mexico, supposedly generating for the investor an astonishing $1,678,010 for each $10,000 invested.

In July 2007, an ASC panel ruled that the McLeods and sales agent Delmer Allen Watt engaged in an illegal distribution of Topsis shares and that the McLeods made misrepresentations in contravention of the Alberta Securities Act.

In that ruling the panel found that the McLeods “induced investors to hand over money – often in relatively significant amounts – to what one investor witness rightly characterized as a scam.”

In its decision on sanction the ASC panel said, “evidence was clear that Topsis had no contracts to supply homes to Mexico” and that “none of the investor witnesses has received any return on, or of, their investment. All of the money invested in Topsis securities has apparently been spent.”

The ASC panel has permanently barred the McLeods from trading in securities or using Alberta securities law exemptions and prohibited them from being directors or officers of any issuer for 25 years. The panel also ordered the McLeods to pay administrative penalties of $100,000 each, as well as costs totalling $60,000 to the ASC.

Watt was ordered to pay $20,000 in administrative penalties and costs and is barred from trading in securities or using Alberta securities law exemptions for 10 years.

The panel also prohibited the trade of Topsis Investments Canada Inc. securities until such time, if ever, as a prospectus in respect of Topsis securities is filed with the ASC.

A copy of the first and second part of the decision in its entirety is posted on the ASC website at www.albertasecurities.com.