Beaupre expected to plead guilty
By Sue Yanagisawa
Local News - Friday, August 20, 2004 @ 07:00
After months of legal haggling away from public scrutiny, the alleged architect of several shady enterprises that took investors in Kingston and several other cities for millions of dollars now plans to plead guilty to at least some of the charges against him.
Looking younger and slimmer than he did a year ago, after his flight to Mexico, a clean-shaven Guy Paul Beaupre, 41, was in Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice yesterday for the latest in a series of judicial pre-
trial meetings.
The meetings were held between Toronto Crown prosecutor Chris Webb, Beaupre’s lawyers and the lawyers representing Beaupre’s co-accused – Glen Lancaster, 32, Jocelyn Capsuyen, 36, of Toronto, and Gilles Landry, 26.
The meetings have all been held in judge’s chambers with Mr. Justice Rommel Masse presiding, but the entire case had appeared to be on its way to trial. Numerous dates from late September through early December were already reserved for a lengthy preliminary hearing.However, after about three hours of discussion that went past 6 p.m. yesterday, local defence lawyer Dan Scully emerged and said that all of the charges will return to court Aug. 26 when it’s expected Beaupre will enter guilty pleas. Scully and Toronto lawyer Jane Kelly, who represents Beaupre’s other lawyer, Edward Greenspan, were both involved in the discussions with the Crown.
Beaupre’s co-accused will be returning to court on the same date, but their intentions haven’t been disclosed.
Beaupre has been in custody since Aug. 6, when he was arrested near his mother’s home in Aurora on an accusation that he violated bail by communicating with co-accused Lancaster.
Lancaster was arrested around the same time and also charged. But he was released again on bail Aug. 10 and was required to live with his mother in Gananoque.
Beaupre remained in custody and, in the week following his arrest, the Peel Regional Police fraud bureau filed 13 additional fraud charges against him, alleging that he was involved in 1999, under the alias Victor Knight, in a shady Mississauga-based company, Universal Payphone Systems.
Police claim the company was a telemarketing scam that relieved investors of more than $1.28 million by convincing them they could earn $250,000 a year on an investment as low as $10,000 using payphones they could install themselves to compete with the big telephone companies.
One hundred of those investors launched a civil suit in 2000, claiming the phones they were sold weren’t designed for use as pay phones and that they weren’t told they’d need approval from the CRTC, or about the fees they’d have to pay to Bell Canada.
Beaupre also faces six charges of fraud and conspiracy relating to telemarketing companies in Kingston, Toronto and Mississauga that police believe have cheated hundreds of investors.
In January, 2003, Kingston RCMP laid the first fraud charges against him, Lancaster and Capsuyen in connection with a Kingston-based candy machine franchiser, The Blue Corp., and Global Silver, which sold jewelry franchises.
All three were later charged with more frauds in connection with Toronto-based ISDI, a jewelry vending machine firm and Gilles Landry, a Newmarket man, was added to their group, charged in connection with ISDI only.
Beaupre disappeared soon after the initial charges were laid against him and was later discovered living in Mexico, where he was ultimately jailed.
He wasn’t returned to Canada until June of 2003, and although he has connections to Godfrey, for the past 10 months while he’s been out on bail he’s been required to live in the Toronto area.