Canadian jailed for selling Guyana mining claim

Mar 19, 2011 News

---

– also fined US$23.5M

US(Niagara Falls Review)-Alberto DoCouto, the flamboyant Canadian developer who was acquitted of fraud charges in Canada in 1998, has been convicted of securities fraud in the United States and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison.
In addition, he was ordered to pay $23.5 million in restitution to the victims.
In June of last year, DoCouto, 68, appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom and agreed to plead guilty to two counts of securities fraud, while in exchange prosecutors agreed to drop more than 170 other charges.
The case returned to court a number of times earlier this year. The matter concluded on Tuesday in front of U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan, who sentenced DoCouto.
Police arrested DoCouto in August 2007, following a lengthy investigation that involved people in the United States and Japan investing more than $26 million in bogus mining projects in South America, Nevada and California and a real estate project in Arizona.
Following his arrest, DoCouto was held in custody for trial after investigators presented evidence to a judge that he was a possible flight risk.
Following Tuesday’s decision, Daniel G. Bogden, United States Attorney for Nevada said: “The defendant wilfully and knowingly made false promises and representations regarding mining and real estate projects and induced persons to provide him with money which he used for his personal enrichment.”
Bogden said the sentencing judge found: “Mr. DoCouto was delusional and not generally remorseful.”
Evidence presented at trial showed between 2001 to 2007, DoCouto created numerous limited companies and corporations and told investors he and his companies were engaged in exploring and developing a series of lucrative mining claims in Peru, Guyana, California and Nevada.
DoCouto told investors the mines held valuable precious metals, such as gold and diamonds worth billions. He persuaded them to invest millions of dollars in the alleged projects in exchange for stock, promissory notes and investment contracts in the companies.
DoCouto told investors their money was needed to bring the projects to fruition. In fact, DoCouto’s companies and projects were a facade and the shares in DoCouto’s companies were worthless. None of the mining projects were developed, court documents showed.
DoCouto, instead, diverted and converted the investors’ funds for his own personal enrichment, including the purchase of an opulent 6,000-square-foot home at Lake Las Vegas and several luxury automobiles.
DoCouto also solicited funds from investors in Canada, Kuwait and elsewhere for a real estate development project in Arizona, court was told.
DoCouto obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors to run water to the property and to develop the project, but again, he converted much of the money for his own personal purposes.
That money was used to pay the mortgage on his home, to pay for lavish home improvements, to make payments to a riding stable and for various cash expenditures.
DoCouto’s case in the United States was investigated by the FBI, with assistance from the United States Bureau of Land Management, and prosecuted by assistant United States Attorneys Timothy S. Vasquez and Nicholas Dickinson.
DoCouto also has a Niagara connection stemming from when he faced fraud charges that involved a Niagara investment firm.
When DoCouto was in Canada, he was the owner-president of Mater’s Management Ltd., based in Newmarket.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he worked closely with Peter Fallon Sr., through a Niagara Falls company, Falloncrest Financial Corporation.
DoCouto lived in a Brampton mansion valued at close to $3 million and drove a $260,000 hand-crafted Aston Martin, similar to agent 007 in the Bond movie Goldfinger.
Mater’s was involved in the development and sale of land and the construction of shopping centres.
About 5,800 investors, many of them from the Niagara peninsula, invested about $100 million in Mater’s mortgages mostly through Niagara Falls-based mortgage broker Falloncrest Financial Corp.
Many of those investors lost their life-savings.
At the time, police described it as one of the country’s largest investment frauds.
DoCouto and Fallon were both charged with various counts of fraud in 1990, following a 23-month police investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police and Niagara Regional Police. But on October 6, 1998, Judge Nick Borkovich of Hamilton stayed the charges — meaning the charges were not proceeded with, but not dismissed.
The judge said he found there was a serious and “flagrant abuse of the process by the state.” He ruled the search and seizure warrants that were obtained early on in the investigation were based on illegal evidence so they were not lawful.

---

---