Victims of B.C. investment fraud can claim partial repayment, BCSC says

A representative with the Bank of Canada displays the new polymer $5 and $10 bank notes alongside the $20, $50, and $100 during a press conference at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

B.C.'s financial markets regulator is making nearly $70,000 in financial penalties it recently received in a fraud case available to those who lost money in the scheme.

The B.C. Securities Commission announced this week that it had received $69,887.85 in repayments toward the debt owed to it by Paul Se Hui Oei and Canadian Manu Immigration & Financial Services Inc.

The payment came "from a party other than Oei or Canadian Manu," the commission said in a news release.

A notice about the funds received has been published on the BCSC website, and investors who lost money "as a direct result of Oei's misconduct" can make a claim for partial repayment using an online form. 

The deadline to submit a claim is Aug. 11.

The money represents less than one per cent of the $7.6 million in fines and penalties Oei owes to the BCSC as a result of a 2017 decision against him. 

In that decision, a BCSC hearing panel found that Oei and three companies he controlled had misappropriated investors' funds and committed fraud.

"Oei and his companies raised approximately $13.3 million for two start-up companies, but did not direct all of the investors’ funds toward start-up costs, as investors were told," the BCSC said in its release this week.

He was ordered to pay approximately $3.1 million – representing the amount he had fraudulently obtained less roughly $2 million that had been repaid to investors – plus a $4.5 million administrative penalty to the BCSC.

Last year, Oei became the first person in B.C. to face the loss of his driver's licence because of unpaid penalties related to securities fraud. 

The BCSC's executive director gave notice to ICBC in 2021 that it should not issue or renew a driver's licence to Oei, and a commission hearing panel upheld the executive director's decision in June 2022. 

The panel noted that the case was the first time it had been asked to review such a decision since the province made changes to the Securities Act, allowing the BCSC to block licence renewals.