An Ontario man who tried to steal more than $300,000 from the Toronto Dominion Bank has been sentenced to 18 months in jail, followed by three years of probation.
On June 26, Phillip Mark Chapman pleaded guilty to fraud, attempted fraud and impersonation between May 6 and May 17, 2013. In the end, Chapman got $15,700 from the sophisticated scheme.
“He was unsuccessful in the larger attempt due to some paperwork failure,” said provincial court Judge Thomas Gove. “But certainly his intent was clear.”
Prosecutor Chandra Fisher told the court that Chapman, 49, had travelled from Ontario and opened a number of bank accounts in Victoria using other people’s names.
On the morning of May 6, Chapman went into the TD bank on Douglas Street and, using false identification, pretended to be an Ontario client with substantial holdings.
Chapman, who was chatty and pleasant and arranged a later coffee date with the teller, tried to have $297,000 wired to an account in Japan. The transaction was approved, but did not go through because the name of the beneficiary in Japan was not correct.
Chapman returned to the bank on May 10 and resubmitted the Japanese wire transfer. He also asked the same teller to wire $39,300 to an account in the name of Paul Osmond at the Bank of Montreal in James Bay.
“The teller found this odd because it would have been cheaper to get a bank draft and walk a few blocks to the bank to take it there himself,” Fisher said.
One of the tellers who set up the Paul Osmond account in James Bay was in the Oak Bay Bank of Montreal branch a few days later when Chapman tried to set up another account using another false name. The bank quickly pulled surveillance videos and discovered the same man was setting up accounts in different names, Fisher said.
Chapman managed to withdraw $10,000 from the Paul Osmond account before the bank put a freeze on those funds.
On May 13, Chapman went back to the TD bank because the wire transfer to Japan still had not gone through. He named a new beneficiary in Japan and also asked to withdraw $5,700. The teller gave him the cash.
In the meantime, corporate security had become aware of the fraudulent transactions.
The next time Chapman showed up at the same wicket hoping to make two more wire transfers, the teller stalled him and kept the paperwork, which was later used to retrieve his fingerprints. Chapman hurried away from the bank.
In January, he was arrested in Toronto and returned to Victoria.
Chapman’s criminal record begins in 1985 with a forged document and includes a number of frauds, impersonations and thefts. He was convicted of fraud and impersonation in 2009 and 2011.
Defence lawyer Chantelle Sutton told the court that Chapman was in the army for four years and was a journeyman in three trades. He contracted hepatitis C in jail and became ill. Unable to work, he agreed to participate in the scheme but thought it would be low-end credit card fraud.
“I consider this to be a sophisticated crime,” Gove said. “The accused claims he was the dupe of an organized criminal operation. It’s frankly hard to give much weight to the assertion of him being duped. He is not naive … and he has a record of similar offences which spans a number of decades. He knew what he was doing. He did it for the money.”
Gove credited Chapman with nine months for the six months he has spent in custody, which means he must spend another nine months in jail.
Gove also made a standalone restitution order to the TD bank for $15,700.
“The TD bank fraud unit will diligently go after him for every cent,” Gove said. “I’ll leave it in their hands.”
Chapman was also ordered to give a sample of his DNA. He is not to possess a driver’s licence, financial documents, bank card, credit card, identification, or open a bank account that is not in his own lawful name.
