HeartLink's con man Rocancourt in court on new charges
2002-09-18 17:42 PT - Street Wire
by Brent Mudry]
Notorious French con man Christophe Rocancourt, who pled guilty this spring to defrauding HeartLink Canada and Howe Street penny stock promoter Robert Baldock of $154,000 while posing as a fictitious Formula One driver, made a brief court appearance Wednesday in Vancouver relating to an expanded New York extradition case stemming from the swath he cut through the pony and polo crowd in the Hamptons.
In a superseding indictment filed June 28 in United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Mr. Rocancourt faces 11 charges, mostly fraud-related, including a false passport charge. The initial one-count indictment, filed in June, 2001, was detailed in a Stockwatch Street Wire on June 15, 2001.
The last-minute superseding indictment throws a wrench into Mr. Rocancourt's waiver of extradition to New York, according to his Victoria lawyer Mayland McKimm. "The whole thing is out the window now," Mr. McKimm said outside the courtroom. His client, Mr. Rocancourt, was set to be shipped off by Oct. 11, the 45-day deadline after Canada's Minister of Justice signed a surrender order on Aug. 27. Instead, he now faces a new scheduling fix date on Oct. 12 in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
Mr. McKimm says the delay with the new indictment is "inexcusable." "It is very unfortunate and an abuse of the court process ... it is outrageous," he told Stockwatch.
The Canadian defence lawyer expresses outrage that New York authorities were working on this new superseding indictment this summer, filed it in court in New York on June 28, yet he only found a week or two ago.
New York prosecutor Ronald White, the deputy chief of the business and securities fraud section of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, is quite calm by comparison. "Mr. Rocancourt can waiver out on this (new) indictment like before -- the same machinery is in place," he told Stockwatch.
In the meantime, the Canadian taxpayer is footing the bill for housing the French con man in jail. Mr. McKimm expects his client may like end up pleaing out anyways in New York, with an expected sentence of three to five years, or more likely two to four years. "He is quite anxious to get on with it."
bmudry@stockwatch.com |
