ONTARIO

SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE

COURT FILE NO.: 3/12

DATE: 20140306

B E T W E E N:

Her Majesty The Queen

S. Guiler, for the Crown

• and -

Peter Snyder

Self-represented

HEARD: March 6, 2014

GORMAN J.: (Orally)

1Peter Snyder pled guilty to counts # 1, 2, and 3 on the indictment – fraud over $5,000.00. The victims are Mr. Snyder’s first cousin, Linda deBelleval, her husband Michael, and their two adult children, Jeremy and Bradley.

2In 2004, Michael deBelleval approached Peter Snyder, a lawyer, to discuss a proposal the family had to invest in income property. Mr. Snyder discouraged this investment, and used his position as a family member and lawyer to encourage the family to invest in his company, N. Star Development Group Ltd.. Mr. Snyder promised the deBellevals a 50% return on their investment. In total, the family invested $116,500.00. Michael and Linda invested $66,500.00; Jeremy invested $20,000.00 and Bradley invested $30,000.00.

3Mr. Snyder provided the deBellevals with false documentation that appeared to show a remarkable rate of return on their investments. Over time, the deBellevals asked for payouts from their invested funds. Each request was met with an excuse by Mr. Snyder. By 2007 the deBellevals were frantic. Mr. Snyder wrote a number of cheques to repay them. Each was returned as “insufficient funds”. Ultimately they complained to police, and Mr. Snyder was arrested. The monies invested by the deBellevals has never been returned.

Circumstances of the Offender

4Peter Snyder was born in Brantford, Ontario on February 8, 1959. His father passed away one year ago; his mother passed away very recently.

5Mr. Snyder completed his secondary school education in Woodstock, and thereafter attended university and law school. He graduated law school in 1984, and worked as a lawyer in a Kitchener, Ontario firm from 1986 to 1989. From 1989 to 2002 he was a sole practitioner. His reported practice was real estate planning, and corporate commercial law. From 2002 until the present, Mr. Snyder describes himself as a “businessman”. The Law Society of Upper Canada has administratively suspended his licence pending the resolution of the case at bar.

6He is a first time offender.

7A Pre-sentence Report was prepared. At p. 5, the author reports:

Before the court is Peter David Snyder, a first time offender, who plead guilty to the offences. Mr. Snyder reported a positive upbringing that was free from abuse and neglect. He denied any intent on his part to commit the offences. His daughter described the subject as a caring and supportive father. He expressed regret and a willingness to comply with any conditions the court might deem appropriate. The subject reports he takes the situation very seriously and states he wants to provide full restitution to the victims and move forward with his life.

However, the victim’s statements indicate the subject’s participation was greater than reported. There are indications that the subject was fully aware of what was occurring and directly influenced the victim’s knowledge of the law and the business process. The impact on the victims has been extensive and long reaching, in every aspect of their life; financial, personal and physical health damages.

Victim Impact Statements

8The deBellevals each filed Victim Impact Statements. In addition to the obvious painful financial loss, the family has experienced significant stress and anxiety. Their trust in Mr. Snyder has completely dissipated. Their collective trust in others has also suffered.

Principles of Sentencing:

9The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives:

(a) To denounce unlawful conduct;

(b) To deter the offender and other persons from committing offences;

(c) To separate offenders from society, where necessary;

(d) To assist in rehabilitating offenders;

(e) To provide reparations for harm done to victims or to the community; and

(f) To promote a sense of responsibility in offenders, and acknowledgment of the harm done to victims and to the community.¹

And of course, a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence.

10As the court stated in R. v. McLellan, [2012] O.J. No. 5028 at para. 27:

This court and other Canadian appellate courts have dealt with the significance and impact of lawyers who commit fraudulent breaches of trust within the context of their professional capacities. The primary sentencing principle at play in these types of cases is general deterrence and denunciation, or the repudiation of the conduct for which the offender was found guilty. The secondary considerations are specific deterrence, rehabilitation and any mitigating circumstances such as a plea of guilty or cooperation with the authorities: see R. v. Oliver, 1977 2190 (BC CA), [1977] 5 W.W.R. 344 (B.C.C.A.)

11I must be mindful of mitigating and aggravating factors in this case:

Mitigating:

(a) Mr. Snyder has pled guilty, although not in a timely manner;

(b) He has no criminal record.

Aggravating:

(a) Mr. Snyder was in a position of trust, both as a lawyer, and a close family member;

(b) The fraud targeted multiple members of his family over a significant period of time;

(c) The total amount of the fraud was $116,500.00.

12As Mr. Snyder is a first time offender, I am mindful of the principle of restraint. As the Court of Appeal stated in R. v. Batisse (2009), 2009 ONCA 114, 93 O.R. (3d) 643, at paragraph 32-33:

[…]the appellant was a first offender. As such, the restraint principle requires that the sentencing judge consider all sanctions apart from incarceration and where, as here, incarceration must be imposed, the term should be as short as possible and tailored to the individual circumstances of the accused: see R. v. Priest, 1996 1381 (Ont. C.A.), (1996), 30 O.R. (3d) 538 (C.A.), at p. 545.

The Appropriate Range of Sentence

13I can do no better than to refer to the case of R. v. Kohuch, [2011] O.J. No. 5447, wherein Justice Greene comprehensively reviewed the range of sentence in fraud over cases²:

In R. v. Suhr, 2002 13476 (ON CA), [2002] O.J. No. 4315 (C.A.), the Court of Appeal upheld a sentence of six months incarceration for a theft over $5000.00. In that case, Mr. Suhr, an employee of Bell Canada, stole a quantity of telephones from his employer over the course of one year and used the funds to support his gambling addiction.

In R. v. Collins, 2011 ONCA 182, [2011] O.J. No. 978, the Court of Appeal imposed a ten month sentence followed by two years probation for Ms. Collins’ role in a very large welfare fraud scheme. Key considerations by the court included the sophisticated nature of the fraudulent scheme, that Ms. Collins was aboriginal, that she was on bail for a long time prior to sentencing, and the impact on Ms. Collins of being separated from her disabled daughter.

The Crown also provided the court with other cases where the frauds were in excess of $100,000 (see R. v. Dobis, 2002 32815 (ON CA), [2002] O.J. No. 646 (C.A.) and R. v. Bogart, 2002 41073 (ON CA), [2002] O.J. No. 3039 (C.A.)). In all these cases substantial periods of incarceration were imposed. It is clear from these cases that conditional sentences are generally not appropriate for such large scale breach of trust frauds. Ordinarily large scale frauds involving a breach of trust merit a penitentiary sentence in the range of three to five years. Even where mitigating considerations have reduced the sentence to the reformatory range, real jail as opposed to a conditional sentence is usually imposed. Having said that, Laskin J.A., speaking for the majority of the Court in R. v. Bogart, [2002] O.J. No. 3039 (C.A.), after noting this reality stated that there may be some cases where a conditional sentence could be imposed on large scale breach of trust frauds. Laskin J.A. stated at para. 38,

Special circumstances that might justify a conditional sentence for OHIP fraud include circumstances where the amount of the fraud is relatively small, the doctor has made full restitution before sentencing or the doctor can point to exceptional personal circumstances such as ill health or advanced age. None of these special circumstances exist here.

In R. v. Robinson, [2003] O.J. No. 4722 (S.C.J.), a 22 month conditional sentence was imposed where the offender defrauded her employer of over $200,000.00. The fraudulent conduct took place over several months and involved deliberate, planned and covert behaviour. The Court held that despite these aggravating factors, exceptional circumstances existed that supported the imposition of a conditional sentence. These exceptional circumstances included the fact that both Ms. Robinson and her spouse were suffering from depression and that Ms. Robinson suffered an auto-immune deficiency and asthma.

In R. v. Campbell, [2005] O.J. No. 4696 (O.C.J.), the sentencing judge found that special circumstances existed to support the imposition of a conditional sentence where Mr. Campbell defrauded his elderly clients out of one million dollars. In this case, Mr. Campbell was 65 years old with no criminal record and appeared to be in a hypomanic state at time of the offence.

In R. v. J.A., [2003] O.J. No. 2167 (O.C.J.) the court imposed a conditional sentence of twelve months for a $248,000 fraud by the accused on her employer. The court held that despite the fact that J.A. abused her position as a book keeper to steal almost a quarter of a million dollars from her employer over two and a half years period, that a conditional sentence was still appropriate given her mental health diagnosis of depression and her difficult childhood.

The Appropriate Sentence

14As the Court of Appeal stated in R. v. McLellan (supra) at para 30:

[…] as a matter of principle a breach of trust by a professional does not preclude the granting of a conditional sentence, even in circumstances of extensive pre-planned conduct over a lengthy period of time with devastating consequences to vulnerable victims.

However, I must carefully weigh the mitigating and aggravating factors in this case.

15The fact that Mr. Snyder was a lawyer is a significant aggravating factor: R. v. Rosenfeld, 2009 ONCA 307, 94 O.R. (3d) 641. That fact, together with his position of trust within the family, are important considerations for this court.

16In my view, those serious aggravating factors, together with the duration of the fraudulent scheme and the significant amount of money stolen, militate against a conditional sentence.

17The court must send a strong and clear message of denunciation and general deterrence in large scale frauds, such as this. The fraud Mr. Snyder perpetrated on his first cousin, and her family, was calculated, and sophisticated. He managed to lull the deBellevals into a false sense of financial security. He created fake documentation to maintain their continued trust. Even as the scheme was collapsing in on him, he had the audacity to write the deBellevals NSF cheques, presumably to buy himself more time.

18Mr. Snyder has appeared before this court time and time again, promising to repay the amounts owed. Much like he did with his victims, he offered this court fanciful excuses and proposals. None have come to light.

19Mr. Snyder is a confidence man. Plain and simple. If as the presentence report states, that “he wants to provide full restitution” he will do so. He does not need a court order for common human decency to prevail.

20In all of the circumstances there will be a sentence of three years in the penitentiary.

Footnotes

1. 1S. 718 Criminal Code of Canada
2. 2At paragraphs 32-38