Feb 10 1996 - Guelph Mercury - A former Metropolitan Toronto Police officer and his business partner were sentenced Friday to 4 1/2 years in a penitentiary for defrauding more than a dozen people of their homes and life savings.
Michael Jenkinson, 41 and Joan Blackwell, 42 of Bolton were found guilty of 13 fraud offences in December after an almost three-month trial at Guelph's General Division court. Between 1988 and 1991 eight couples were bilked out of $988,500 and a ninth couple, Susan and Sam Dixon from Puslinch Township, lost a thoroughbred racing stable valued at $1.2 million.
Most of the victims are from Mississauga, Oakville and Burlington area but the investigation began in Wellington County after a complaint by the Dixons.
Justice Bourke Smith noted many of the victims are middleaged or elderly people whose financial security was destroyed.
"Probably some of the victims would have preferred to be victims of an assault from which they could mend or recover more easily than from financial devastation" said Smith.
One of the victims died of heart failure while the case was before the courts and his widow was unable to attend Friday's sentencing because she had recently suffered a stroke.
The couple lost $138,000 and their fully paid home.
Smith said he searched in vain for an alternative to incarceration that would have required Jenkinson and Blackwell to work in the community while being monitored by penal authorities, live at the lowest sustainable standard of living and pool all their earnings to repay the victims.
"Society out there is sick and tired of people like you and people like me in these gowns who just respond like automatic teller machines to the principles of sentencing." Smith told defence lawyer Thomas Pratt after Pratt recommended Jenkinson and Blackwell be ordered to do community service and make restitution to the victims instead of being sent to jail.
Crown attorney Jocelyn Speyer argued strongly for a penitentiary sentence, calling it the only way to send a message to the public that the Bolton couple's business practices are criminal and not worth the risk.
Victims testified at the trial that Blackwell and Jenkinson went to great lengths to encourage them to mortgage their homes and invest in their company.