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The woman who lost the most agreed to loan Kent $100,000 after he said WestJet and Air Canada had approached him about building an online booking platform. She also agreed to lease a BMW SUV for Kent’s personal use
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Edmonton prosecutors are seeking to designate an admitted romance fraudster as a dangerous offender, a move that could see him jailed indefinitely but with little, if any, financial crime record.
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Jeffrey Paul Kent, 52, pleaded guilty in April to five counts of fraud over $5,000 after multiple women alleged he conned them out of money after meeting them on online dating sites.
Kent, who served four years in prison for similar offenses in British Columbia, hid his identity and variously claimed to be a doctor, lawyer, professor of legal ethics, owner of a construction company and hotelier with properties in Vancouver, Victoria and Malta.
In all, he defrauded the women of almost $170,000, which he used to pay for gambling, vehicles and personal items.
At a June 23 hearing, prosecutor Megan Rosborough said the Crown applied for Kent to be examined by a mental health expert for the purposes of a dangerous offender application.
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If successful, the court could sentence Kent to an indeterminate term in prison without the possibility of parole for at least seven years or impose a long-term supervision order.
Gary Botting, a Vancouver-based defense lawyer who has represented defendants in dangerous offender hearings, said the designation of dangerous offenders in non-violent offenses is “very unusual” and that if successful, the Crown’s application could have “widespread consequences of the extension of the designation DO process.”
I met through dating apps
Kent met all five women between April 2016 and May 2017 on the dating website Plenty of Fish. He used aliases, identifying himself as Dr. Jeff Sheridan and Jeff Sheenan. According to an agreed statement of facts, in early 2017, Kent messaged more than 60 women on another dating site in just 48 hours.
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The names of all five women named in the indictment are under a publication ban. Some were struggling in their personal lives at the time they met Kent, including divorce, single parenthood and bankruptcy.
In court documents, the five women describe how quickly things progressed with Kent. Their first dates took place in restaurants and cafes, with Kent usually appearing in an expensive suit. He came across as empathetic, successful and charming. In three of the cases, he moved into the women’s homes weeks after they met. Promises of marriage usually followed.
Kent eventually approached each of the women for “investment” money. The woman who lost the most agreed to loan Kent $100,000 after he said WestJet and Air Canada had approached him about building an online booking platform. She also agreed to lease a BMW SUV for Kent’s personal use.
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In fact, Kent gambled at Edmonton-area casinos “on an almost daily basis” and made weekly trips to the racetrack, the agreed facts said.
As the relationship progressed, Kent became increasingly controlling. He told several of the women he had brain cancer and faked seizures. When they asked questions about the state of their “investments,” he accused them of not being committed to the relationship. Another time he threatened suicide. A woman who Kent got pregnant and gave an STI said he threatened to hit her and would “veer into traffic” when she was driving in an attempt to scare her.
When the women learned Kent’s true identity — often from an online documentary about his BC allegations — Kent said the convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court, that the video was misleading and that he was coerced into participating.
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Kent was eventually arrested and has been incarcerated at the Edmonton Detention Center since December 2017. While incarcerated, he gave interviews to Postmedia about conditions in the correctional system, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A rarely used section in scams
In an email, the Alberta Prosecutor’s Office said a formal dangerous offender application has not yet been filed in Kent’s case.
The process began earlier this year when the Crown notified the court and Kent’s public defender of its intention to pursue a dangerous offender designation. He plans to apply under section 752 of the Kent Penal Code for custody to be evaluated by an expert, usually a psychologist or psychiatrist.
If Justice Melanie Hayes-Richards grants the application, and depending on the outcome of the assessment, the Crown may make a formal application under section 753 of the Criminal Code.
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Under this section, a court can consider someone a dangerous offender if it is satisfied that the accused has committed a “serious crime of bodily harm” and “poses a threat to the life, safety or physical or mental well-being of other persons”.
The Criminal Code includes a list of offenses for grievous bodily harm, which does not include fraud. It does, however, allow for cases where the offender exhibits “a pattern of repeated behaviour… causing severe psychological harm to others by failing to curb his behavior in the future”.
The dangerous offender application must ultimately be approved by the provincial attorney general.
Botting, who has co-authored a book on dangerous offender law, said the designation of a dangerous offender in a case of “simple fraud” would be “unprecedented”. He said the attorney general would have to consider the “widespread implications of expanding the DO determination process to include non-violent crimes.”
Hayes-Richards will hear arguments on the Crown’s section 752 application in January 2023. Kent and his lawyer, Anna Coney, declined to comment, citing the ongoing court case.
jwakefield@postmedia.com
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