Three of the seven Montreal-area people arrested last week by the RCMP on an extradition request from the U.S., where they are alleged to have been part of a large-scale grandparent scam, were granted releases at the Montreal courthouse Wednesday while their cases are pending.<\/p>\n
The three men were arrested May 7, along with Glen Crossley, 56, a West Island resident with a criminal record that includes causing the death of Canadian Olympic hero Victor Davis in 1989, when he struck the gold-medal swimmer with his car. Crossley has also served time more recently for manslaughter.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Quebec Superior Court Justice Lyne D\u00e9carie was informed that Crossley, who is detained, could not appear before her because he was being treated at a hospital in northern Montreal. A lawyer representing Crossley said she intends to file a motion seeking his release soon, but nothing was said of why Crossley was at a hospital instead of appearing in court as scheduled.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, D\u00e9carie was juggling the cases of dozens of people who were arrested on extradition requests last year in the same grandparent scam investigation as well as the seven people arrested last week. <\/p>\n
According to a release issued last week by the United States Attorney\u2019s Office District of Vermont, \u201cbetween the summer of 2021 and June 4, 2024, the defendants engaged in a \u2018Grandparent Scam\u2019 involving phone calls made from call centres in and around Montreal. During these phone calls, defendants falsely claimed to be an elderly victim\u2019s relative, typically a grandchild, who had been arrested following a car crash and needed money for \u2018bail.\u2019 Other defendants posed as an \u2018attorney\u2019 representing the elderly victim\u2019s relative. Elderly victims were often told that there was a \u2018gag order\u2019 in place to prevent the elderly victim from telling anyone about their family member\u2019s supposed arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all, D\u00e9carie handled the cases of 32 people who are wanted on charges in the U.S. related to the grandparent scheme. <\/p>\n
In one case, the Crown agreed to release Kyle Lesser, 34, of Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, one of the seven people arrested last week. A few people he knows agreed to deposit $10,000 and post a combined bond of $30,000 to secure his release.<\/p>\n
Lesser also agreed to surrender his Canadian passort and is not allowed to apply for a new one. Among the many other conditions he agreed to, Lesser is also not allowed to own cryptocurrency or make any transactions with it.<\/p>\n
Lesser, who appeared through a videoconference while he was held at the Montreal detention centre, looked toward the ceiling and appeared very relieved when his lawyer, Sabrina Lapolla, informed him he would be released within a matter of hours.<\/p>\n
According to an affidavit filed as part of the extradition request, the network made more than US$21 million over the course of 16 months.<\/p>\n
The author of the affidavit wrote that a ledger, found in the home of one of the leaders of the scam, revealed that Crossley was allegedly paid more than $268,000 and Lesser allegedly more than $346,000 for their efforts.<\/p>\n
Evangelos Lohaitis, 36, of St-Eustache, another person on the ledger who was arrested last week, was allegedly paid more than $499,000 by the network.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the Crown also agreed to Lohaitis\u2019s release. His mother and his partner were willing to deposit money and agreed to an undertaking to secure his release. Lohaitis is also not allowed to possess or make transactions using cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n
D\u00e9carie also ordered Lohaitis to \u201cstart therapy to solve your gambling problems\u201d within a month and to abstain from gambling.<\/p>\n
The third person who the Crown agreed could be released on Wednesday was Luca Santalucia, 27, of LaSalle. He is alleged to have been paid more than $275,000 by the scam network. <\/p>\n
He and his mother agreed to post a total of $70,000 to secure his release and his partner agreed to deposit a total of $15,000.<\/p>\n
pcherry@postmedia.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three of the seven Montreal-area people arrested last week by the RCMP on an extradition request from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[50],"class_list":{"0":"post-44148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal","8":"tag-montreal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}