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Hells Angel’s extradition hearing in stock fraud case delayed

Courtney Vasseur is a member of the Nomads chapter of the motorcycle gang
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Hells Angels and other outlaw motorcycle clubs from across Canada were in Langley last year for a gang member’s funeral. (Langley Advance Times files)

The extradition hearing of a Lower Mainland Hells Angel accused of being part of a multi-million dollar stock fraud scheme in the United States has been pushed back to this fall.

Courtney “Court” Vasseur is a member of the elite Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels. In April 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that he was one of 10 people being charged with fraud in an alleged $100 million pump-and-dump scheme.

The extradition hearing, originally scheduled for this spring, will now start on Oct. 30 in BC Supreme Court in Vancouver. Persons charged with a criminal offence are considered not guilty until the charges are proven in court.

Vasseur, who allegedly went by aliases including “Black Water,” “Cyril Vetsch,” “Arctic Shark” and “Oscar Devries” during the scheme, is linked to $35 million of the $100 million illegal total in the schemes.

He’s facing securities and wire fraud charges that could each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.

A pump-and-dump scheme is a con in which a low-value or worthless stock is promoted and “pumped” in a variety of ways, including via online promotion claiming the stock will go up in value, or fake trades between people in on the con, which make the stock look more valuable and highly-traded than it actually is.

Vasseur formerly worked for Aggressive Roadbuilders, a Langley-area company that went under in 2008 after accountants and investigators discovered its head, Matthew Brooks, and his comptroller, Kirk Roberts, had defrauded Scotiabank of $6 million.

Brooks, in an interview with the Langley Advance Times last year, vehemently insisted that Vasseur never got any money from the Scotiabank fraud and had nothing to do with it.

READ MORE: FRAUD IN BC: Millions vanished from Langley roadbuilder at centre of fraud investigation

READ MORE: B.C. Hells Angel charged in crackdown on international stock manipulation ring

Vasseur has never been convicted of a crime in Canada, but in 2013, he was charged with possession of fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking, after his Cadillac Escalade crashed into the back of a bus at Cambie and 16th in Vancouver.

Both Vasseur and the man at the wheel, Craig Leonard Retvedt, were discovered passed out due to accidental fentanyl overdose – an open baggie of the drug was found in a console between the seats. Both men were charged, but because there was not enough evidence to say which of the men had brought the drug into the vehicle, both were found not guilty in a B.C. Supreme Court trial in 2017.

“One of the two men clearly was in possession of at least the powder, and possibly both of them were,” Justice Heather Holmes noted in her 2017 ruling.


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Matthew Claxton

About the Author: Matthew Claxton

Raised in Langley, as a journalist today I focus on local politics, crime and homelessness.
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