Pierre Montpellier, the disgraced former financial adviser, is once again one of Northern Life?s top newsmakers.
He has been in the news since 1998.
The beginning of 2004 saw Montpellier behind bars awaiting trial on charges of ripping off 128 clients of more than $5.3 million between 1995 and 1998 when he owned a Sudbury-based financial consulting firm.
Montpellier pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000 and one count of theft over $5,000 on the first day of his long-awaited trial.
He was originally charged with 151 counts of theft and 151 counts of fraud, but the plea bargain agreed to involve 128 clients.
For his crimes, he received an additional two-year penitentiary term on top of the 31 months he had spent in pretrial custody at the Sudbury jail following his arrest in early 2001.
Montpellier served six months of his sentence at the minimum security Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst. He was released from a Hamilton-area halfway house just before Christmas.
Montpellier has numerous court orders imposed against him, including not being allowed to work for any financial institution.
Montpellier?s defence was paid for by the Ontario taxpayer. Montpellier spent the money he stole on an extravagant lifestyle.
With false promises of taking clients? money and investing it to obtain remarkable returns, Montpellier conned lawyers, accountants, professors, wealthy business owners, retired miners and the elderly.
Montpellier still faces civil litigation from numerous clients he stole from. No court dates have been set in these civil actions.
