Two B.C. men are still free on bail and six months away from hearings to appeal their extradition to the United States three years after they were accused by the FBI of helping orchestrate a $35 million fraud.
Courtney "Court" Vasseur and Curtis Lehner were charged in April 2022 with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, multiple counts of securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering by the U.S. Justice Department.
Vasseur is a full-patch Hells Angel who has been identified by police as being associated with the elite Nomads chapter in the past.
The charges stem from an alleged "pump and dump" stock fraud scheme that also led to charges against Domenic Calabrigo, a Canadian living in the Bahamas, and German-Turkish citizen Hasan Sario. All the alleged crimes took place between 2013 and 2018, and some charges carry a potential maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.
Persons charged with a criminal offence are considered not guilty until the charges are proven in court.
A pump-and-dump scheme involves fraudsters taking control of a large proportion of the stock of a small, low-value company. They can then use a variety of methods, including fake trades back and forth among each other, false press releases, or rumours and promotion on social media, to "pump" the stock's value higher. The fraudsters then sell their stock 鈥� the "dump" 鈥� and exit the company, usually leaving the stock value to crater, with the new stock owners who bought at the inflated value facing losses.
The extradition process in this case has moved slowly.
After being charged in the spring of 2022, Lehner and Vasseur were in court in the fall and winter of 2023 for an extradition hearing. The judge ordered them to be extradited in January 2024. Both men appealed.
Both the original extradition hearing, and now the appeal hearings, have been scheduled, then delayed by months.
Vasseur was scheduled to appear for his appeal hearing on Friday, May 2, but that has now been moved to Sept. 12.
Lehner has, for some time, been scheduled to appear on Sept. 8, for a four-hour hearing.
By the time those appeals are heard, it will have been three and a half years since the charges were announced.
The Langley Advance Times has reached out to the federal Ministry of Justice for comment on the length of time the extradition process has taken.
If they lose their appeals, both men could attempt to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. While appeals to the Supreme Court are rarely heard, that would result in a delay of a few more months.
Neither Vasseur nor Lehner has a criminal record in British Columbia.
Vasseur is a former employee of a paving company run by Langley's Matthew Brooks, who was convicted of a $6 million fraud against Scotiabank. Brooks was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Vasseur was never charged or implicated, and
In the late 1990s, Lehner was a senior executive with Eron Mortgage Corporation. Former Eron president Brian Slobogian, and vice-president Frank Biller, eventually pleaded guilty to a fraud that swindled 3,200 investors, most in B.C., out of $170 million. Lehner was not charged in the scheme.
