Thursday July 24, 2014 (Vol. 39 No. 59)
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Quiet conciliator: Friends and co-workers remember mber the late Mike Lane as a dedicated ated family man and a longtime RCMP constable with a knackk for bridging differences. i see page 11
‘One big lie’ for $100m
Ponzi marks suffer greatly Jeff Nagel Black Press
Photos courtesy White Rock Museum & Archives
The White Rock Sea Festival in the glory days of its first decade, the 1950s. Above, the parade travels Marine Drive; below, crowds throng the pier.
Vote of confidence from city as new group of longtime residents take charge
Invested in a Sea Festival revival Alex Browne Staff Reporter
The 65th-anniversary edition of the White Rock Sea Festival is picking up momentum with confirmation of a $25,000 matching grant for this year’s festivities from the city. And organizers, headed by White Rock Events Society president Michelle Pedersen, say indications are good for a reinvigorated version of the annual celebration for the Aug. 1-3 weekend, buoyed by the presence of Saturday entertainment headliner The Powder Blues Band. The much-anticipated Torchlight Parade already stands at some 50 confirmed entries, with marching bands and city and commercial floats, including one featuring renowned impersonator Randy ‘Elvis’ Friskie. City council voted to approve the additional funds July 14, after reviewing a report from financial services director Sandra Kurylo, who recommended approving a $15,000 grant from the city’s contingency budget.
The funds approved bring the total value of the city’s support for the sea festival – in cash and in-kind contributions – to $107,000. “I think we’ve got one chance here for the sea festival,” said Coun. Grant Meyer, in pushing the higher-than-recommended amount. Said Coun. Al Campbell, “We either want this to happen or we don’t. We’ve gone to this length
for this time. If we want it to succeed – and we do – I would support the amended motion.” Mayor Wayne Baldwin described the festival’s revival as “much appreciated, really positive for the community.” Pedersen said she looks on the city’s contribution as a big vote of confidence for the event – rebranded with its original name after years under the Spirit of the Sea Festival banner. “I don’t think this is something they do often – the biggest thing, for us, as a new society is earning trust,” she said. She noted that while the city said in February it was going to commit $15,000 to the parade and float construction, in addition to in-kind contributions, it asked – rightly, she said – for the society to prove itself. “Instead of saying ‘yes’ to all this funding they created a matching grant – it was telling us, if you guys can step up to the plate, we’ll match you. i see page 5
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A former notary public who bilked scores of Metro Vancouver investors out of more than $100 million has been found by securities regulators to have run a Ponzi scheme. Vancouver-based Rashida Samji committed a fraud under the B.C. Securities Act on more than 200 investors between 2003 and 2012, a B.C. Securities Commission panel ruled. South Surrey lawyer Scott Nicoll, who acted on behalf of 51 victims from Surrey and Richmond, is not surprised by the finding. “It was pretty apparent it was a fraud from the outset,” he said. Samji claimed she was offering a secure investment guaranteed to pay 12 per cent a year. Invested cash would go into a trust account that would secure borrowing by a B.C. winery so it could expand internationally. “The whole investment scheme was one big lie,” the BCSC panel states in its ruling. “There was no investment related to the wine business. Samji used investors’ funds to pay other investors in order to keep the scheme going. She also used investors’ funds for her own purposes. It was a monumental deceit.” The BCSC has yet to determine its sanctions against Samji, who also faces criminal charges of fraud and is named in civil lawsuits. Nicoll said the Surrey victims he represented invested between $50,000 and $1.1 million each. “They were either elderly or still working in very average jobs,” he said. i see page 4