"So what's the problem little RBC man? Ate too much popcorn and fell asleep at the switch did we ..... well did we?"

RBC Dominion Securities and two of its employees fined $700,000 in Earl Jones Case

By Paul Delean
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A screen grab of Earl Jones being interviewed by the SQ (Surete du Quebec) on July 27, 2009. Jones who passed himself off as a financial adviser, htough he was never licensed as one, was convicted of defrauding clients of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme. (Photograph by Quebec Police)

MONTREAL — RBC Dominion Securities and two employees of its Place Ville-Marie branch will pay $700,000 in fines for having “failed in their gatekeeper duty” and allowed Earl Jones to transact freely in RBC accounts from 2003 to 2008.

Jones was sentenced in 2010 to 11 years in jail for defrauding 158 clients of an estimated $50 million.

Royal Bank concluded a $17-million settlement with victims earlier this year.

In a decision dated Monday, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), which oversees investment dealers, provided details of a settlement concluded with RBC Dominion Securities and employees Jean-Pierre Ménard and Serge Leclaire.

Ménard and Leclaire will pay fines of $100,000 apiece and RBC Dominion Securities will ante up $500,000. The two men also are suspended for six months.

They “admitted that they failed in their gatekeeper duty when they allowed Earl Jones to have numerous trading authorizations for numerous unrelated clients and did not question certain withdrawals from certain accounts for which Earl Jones had trading authorization,” IIROC said in a statement.

pdelean@montrealgazette.com