The British Columbia Supreme Court has demanded that a man accused of involvement in a significant securities fraud case in the United States clarify the origins of substantial funds transferred to a Vancouver attorney.
According to the court ruling made public on Tuesday, Kevin Miller was implicated in a 2015 complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for his alleged part in a fraudulent scheme related to the shares of a company known as Jammin’ Java Corp.
The complaint stated that the company’s stock prices surged from 17 cents per share to over US$6 per share from December 2010 to May 2011, resulting in $78 million in illegal trading gains.
Although Miller settled the U.S. case in 2017, agreeing to surrender more than US$800,000 in alleged profits and interest, he neither admitted nor denied the commission’s accusations as part of the agreement.
The court document revealed that Miller wired over US$3 million in “large sums” to a British Columbia law firm, leading to the disbarment of Ronald Pelletier of the Pelletier Legal Group by the Law Society of B.C. – marking the first instance of a lawyer facing disciplinary action for assisting clients in concealing the unlawful proceeds from securities fraud.
In 2022, Miller sought to access the funds, prompting the B.C. Director of Civil Forfeiture to file a lawsuit the following year, claiming that the money was derived from illegal activities. As a result, the judge has now instructed Miller to provide a detailed account of how he obtained the funds.