A hearing panel of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) has imposed a penalty on Patrick David O’Neill which includes a fine of $775,000 and a permanent ban. The panel also ordered Mr. O’Neill to pay $104,985.06 in costs.

The panel’s penalty decision follows an earlier decision which found that O’Neill misled clients and his firm with false and forged documents in several instances, and that he misappropriated client funds in excess of $200,000. The panel also found that O’Neill failed to meet with IIROC staff and cooperate with an IIROC investigation.

The earlier decision found that O’Neill engaged in conduct unbecoming and detrimental to the public interest, contrary to IIROC Rule 29.1, by:

  • delivering a false document to a client to make her believe that a transaction had been cancelled as per her instructions;
  • falsely allowing the same client on two separate occasions to believe that she had received compensation from her investment dealer, even though the cheques had come from her own cash account;
  • misleading another client by sending him forged statements that did not accurately reflect his portfolios;
  • forging or using change of address documents with falsified copied signatures to redirect that same client’s mail away from his residential address;
  • sending the firm’s compliance department a letter with the forged signature of that same client;
  • making a client believe that he was receiving a monthly rental income, although the funds came from the client’s own margin account with the firm; and
  • proposing a fictitious and unauthorized off-book investment to a client to obtain $200,000 of the client’s money.

The panel also found that O’Neill failed to cooperate in the IIROC investigation by failing to meet requests to appear and to provide information, a violation of IIROC Rule 19.5. O’Neill also failed to attend the penalty hearing on February 3, 2011.

The violations took place between July, 2006 and August, 2009 when O’Neill was a Registered Representative at the Pointe-Claire Branch of Dundee Securities Corporation, an IIROC-regulated firm. IIROC began its formal investigation into O’Neill’s conduct on April 6, 2009, after the firm terminated O’Neill and reported numerous client complaints to IIROC. O’Neill is no longer registered with an IIROC-regulated firm.