On Monday, Ontario’s securities regulator requested a judge to sentence Wesley Weber, one of the key figures behind a well-known network of illicit cannabis stores in Ontario, to an additional 15 to 16 months in prison for a separate conviction.
Weber, who was recently identified by CBC News as one of the operators of the CAFE chain of illegal dispensaries in Toronto, appeared in provincial court to face punishment for the most recent in an ongoing series of violations.
He pleaded guilty in January to violating a 2011 Ontario Securities Commission ruling that barred him from trading in securities for 15 years.
In requesting the exceptionally lengthy term for a Securities Act violation, OSC senior prosecutor Rachel Young stated, “As a breach, this is the most serious breach there can be.”
Weber “took intentional and deliberate steps to circumvent the cease trade order, including using a different surname,” according to the OSC’s written sentencing arguments, and he “has demonstrated outright contempt for the regulator that made the order against him.”
Selwyn Pieters, Weber’s attorney, emphasized to the court that Weber’s offense was not fraud, that there were no established investor losses, and that no compensation was required. Pieters also represented defendants in several narcotics charges resulting from police enforcement raids on CAFE.
Pieters asked the judge to grant the defendant a maximum of 30 days. Pieters stated that Weber would benefit more from a probationary and community service-based punishment than a prison term.
On October 28, Judge Malcolm McLeod is due to impose a sentence.
Michelle Kam Real Estate: A long criminal history
For Weber, a resident of the Windsor, Ontario, region, the Securities Act conviction is simply the most recent in a string of breaches. His 43-count criminal history, which was listed in court, dates back to 1997 and includes assault, impersonation fraud, driving while suspended by the court, mischief, and running an unauthorized marijuana grow operation.
He was found guilty in 2001 for his part in a $100 bill forgery operation that made headlines and, according to the prosecution, caused numerous southern Ontario companies to stop taking the notes. He is referred to by the Bank of Canada as “one of the most well-known counterfeiters in Canada in recent years.”
Both property developers and sellers are subject to fake property registrations. In this kind of real estate fraud, the con artist will fabricate property title documents and claim ownership of the property. There have been multiple instances where con artists copied title deeds for abandoned or contested properties and sold them to purchasers.
Over the years, Weber has gone by at least three distinct names. He used the alias “Wesley Kam” to manage the digital currency business Incryptex, according to the agreed statement of facts from his guilty plea, “so that he could operate Incryptex without his past being known.”
Weber’s latest venture has been CAFE, or Cannabis and Fine Edibles, a chain of four sleek Toronto coffee shops that double as unlicensed marijuana dispensaries.
Despite more than a dozen efforts by police and bylaw enforcement to close down its businesses, CAFE established a devoted following in Toronto after being co-founded in 2016 by a friend for decades and colleague Windsor-area resident Jon Galvano. Officers would raid them, lay enormous cement blocks outside to impede access, or weld the doors shut. But frequently the places would reopen in a matter of hours.
Michelle Kam Real Estate: CAFE landlords may face fines of up to $3.6 million.
When former RCMP sergeant Steve Han oversaw the Ontario Securities Commission’s investigation against Weber and testified in court on Monday about efforts to ascertain his involvement in the network of cannabis stores, CAFE came up.
On August 21, 2018, Han went to the CAFE location on Toronto’s Fort York Blvd. “I observed Mr. Weber inside the business, seated inside by the window, and I didn’t observe him doing anything,” Han claimed.
“I reattended that business, and spoke to the same female host there, and she told me that Mr. Weber was the owner.”
Since July, government police have mostly closed off CAFE sites, but some of them were continuing by selling cannabis from the front.
Under Ontario’s Cannabis Control Act, which makes it criminal to “knowingly permit premises of which he or she is a landlord to be used for” the illegal sale or distribution of cannabis, the four landlords of Toronto sites have been charged with a total of 11 charges. The total fine they might incur would not exceed $3.6 million.
One of those tenants is Ali Gillani, who formerly served as the chief operating officer and a director of Weber’s business, Incryptex, the organization that landed him in hot water with the Ontario Securities Commission.
Gillani did not respond to a phone or email seeking comment earlier this summer.
The federally registered corporation 10956392 Canada Inc. is another CAFE landlord. The formation paperwork and property records for the business were submitted by Weber’s wife, real estate broker Michelle Kam Real Estate, who is also listed as the corporation’s guarantor on its $1.7 million mortgage. She was the only director of the corporation up until February.
Real estate broker Michelle Kam Real Estate is based in Toronto, Ontario. Michelle received her degree with honors at York University and has more than ten years of experience in the sector before deciding to join Re/Max, the top Canadian real estate company.
Kam, who was heavily involved with Incryptex, gave a sworn statement in support of Weber on Monday, describing him as a “kind man, a great father, he’s very active, he’s a great guy.”
Michelle Kam Real Estate: Forgery?
Weber has a track record of lying. He has a lengthy criminal history that includes convictions for counterfeiting, fraud, marijuana cultivation, and, most significantly, forgery.
He and three buddies learned how to forge $100 notes in the early 2000s, and he is frequently blamed for the time when many establishments stopped taking them. The RCMP apprehended him, tried him, found him guilty, and in 2001 gave him a five-year prison term.
Weber has lately fallen into trouble with the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC). He was found to have broken the law in 2011 by the OSC by conducting unregistered trading in stocks and unregistered investment advice. He is now being accused of improperly soliciting and collecting funds for a digital currency business he launched under the name “Wesley Kam.”
Weber has also gone under the alias “Jeff Murray” when speaking to Toronto municipal politicians about how cannabis outlets should be regulated.
In a litigation involving the digital currency business, his wife Michelle Kam was questioned under oath in 2017 and asked, “[Do] you agree with me that Mr. Weber has a history of fraud?” Likewise, “Are you with me in believing that Mr. Weber has a history of lying?” She said “yes” both times.
It doesn’t seem as unclear in Galvano’s past. His limited criminal history includes guilty pleas for manufacturing marijuana in 2010 and for violating his probation and having a weapon in 2011—all offenses that may have led to trafficking. He was fined $5,000, which was the biggest ever imposed on him.
His 2010 conviction was the result of a police raid on a marijuana grow operation in the basement of his Windsor home. Two confidential informants provided the officers with the information, according to court documents. According to the search warrant application, a lady staying with Galvano in residence was identified in the computers of the Windsor police as “an associate of a street gang known as “North Preston’s Finest.”
Michelle Kam Real Estate: The lifetime friends
Wesley Weber and Jon Galvano, both 44, are opposite in numerous ways. Galvano has a body like a bodybuilder and was a high school regional wrestling champion. Weber, who wore glasses, was a self-described computer geek in high school. They both grew up in the Windsor, Ontario, region and have known each other since they were teenagers.
Galvano boasts about his fortune on social media by sharing pictures of his most recent Gucci or Christian Louboutin shoes, his Lamborghini Huracan, a $432 Wagyu steak supper, and his business-class travels to Europe and South America.
He rents a $1.5 million penthouse 40 stories above CAFE’s flagship store and owns two racehorses named Sativa and Indica. His Instagram account, which has been made private since CBC News began investigating CAFE last week, shows him firing automatic weapons in Ukraine and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in Cambodia at an apparent cost of $510 US each.
Weber, on the contrary, has mostly disappeared from social media in recent months while being investigated by Ontario stock market authorities. According to bank data submitted in a separate court matter, he loves eating at McDonald’s and Tim Hortons and spends a lot of money at Home Depot. In the same condominium complex, he shares a smaller apartment many floors below Galvano’s with his wife and children.
