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A twice-convicted Calgary fraudster has been sent back to prison for 10 years.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Scott Brooks, 52, pleaded guilty mid-trial to 17 offences including fraud over $5,000 and several forgery-related charges.<\/p>\n
Brooks admitted to taking more than $1 million from six victims between 2010 and 2018.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Aaron Rankin argued for a 10-year prison term while defence lawyer Kal\u00e9 Vizor asked the judge to consider a five- to six-year sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cold-blooded campaign of victimization that Mr. Brooks undertook is aberrant and pathological,\u201d said Rankin in his sentencing submissions.<\/p>\n
While Brooks\u2019 guilty plea came nearly at the conclusion of the Crown\u2019s case, Vizor argued that the plea should be considered mitigating, \u201cas the saying goes, better late, than never.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his sentencing decision Wednesday, Justice Robert Armstrong sided with the prosecution in ruling that a sentence of fewer than 10 years would not adequately reflect the seriousness of the crimes or each victim\u2019s loss, which, the judge said, \u201cmust be meaningfully acknowledged.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Longstanding pattern of dishonesty’<\/p>\n
The judge noted that Brooks has \u201ca longstanding pattern of dishonesty and criminal conduct\u201d and that the consequences of his crimes were “catastrophic” to his victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brooks previously served a five-year sentence for three convictions in 2001 of fraud over $5,000, which the judge described as \u201csubstantially similar fraud and impersonation offences.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On top of the prison sentence, Brooks has been ordered to pay back $924,000 in restitution over the next eight years, with another five-year prison term to be served should he default.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brooks\u2019 trial was delayed a number of times since it began in 2025. He hired and fired six different defence lawyers and at one point intentionally overdosed on his heart medication, requiring hospitalization.<\/p>\n
At that point, the judge revoked Brooks\u2019 bail after Rankin argued he was intentionally making himself sick to delay the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Armstrong described Brooks as having \u201cdeliberately engaged in conduct designed to thwart and delay the process\u201d and declined to impose the typically allowed enhanced credit of a day-and-a-half credit for every day served.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oil and gas fraud<\/p>\n
The judge reviewed the offender\u2019s crimes as part of his sentencing, noting Brooks\u2019 crimes involved lying to investors and pretending to be involved in several multi-million oil and gas industry deals.<\/p>\n
As part of his plea, Brooks admitted that he lied to friends and acquaintances about having invented a flange for use in the oil and gas industry. He told his potential investors that the flange was so innovative that the sale of the technology would be worth more than $6 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One couple gave Brooks their retirement savings of $800,000. They ended up living in their daughter\u2019s basement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In another scheme, Brooks convinced a victim to hand over $200,000 after he faked correspondence \u2014 including forging an email signature \u2014 with a local lawyer, telling the would-be investor that he was involved in a multi-million dollar business deal with ConocoPhillips.<\/p>\n
Brooks ‘lived a double life’<\/p>\n
During the plea, Justice Anderson heard that Brooks directed his victims to transfer money into accounts that were in the names of his wife and underage son. More than $500,000 was sent to the teenage boy\u2019s account.<\/p>\n
When police first began investigating Brooks in 2019, he wrote emails to the lead investigator confessing to his crimes, calling himself a \u201cfraudster.\u201d<\/p>\n
“I know you also view me as a fraudster who will lie his way around anything,\u201d wrote Brooks to the officer. \u201cThat is true, I am. This is probably the only truthful thing I\u2019ve said in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brooks told police that he \u201clived a double life\u201d and \u201cdestroyed families.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":["post-834493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-ca","tag-calgary","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}