Murray Wood: Of Easter bunny bells and Juicy Fruit gum
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VANCOUVER — The British Columbia Supreme Court has ordered a man accused of participating in a multimillion-dollar securities fraud in the United States to explain the source of “large sums” of money sent to a Vancouver lawyer.
The court ruling released Tuesday says Kevin Miller was the subject of a 2015 complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for his alleged role in a “pump and dump” scheme involving the shares of a company called Jammin’ Java Corp.
The ruling says the commission alleged the company’s shares shot from 17 cents American per share to more than US$6 per share between December 2010 and May 2011, reaping $78 million in illicit trading profits.
The court ruling says Miller settled the U.S. case in 2017, agreeing to disgorge more than US$800,000 in alleged ill-gotten gains and interest, but he didn’t admit or deny the commission’s allegations as part of the settlement.
The ruling says Miller wired “large sums” to a B.C. law firm totalling more than US$3 million, and the Law Society of B.C. later disbarred Ronald Pelletier of the Pelletier Legal Group, the first time a lawyer had been disciplined for assisting “his clients to hide the illegal proceeds of their securities fraud.”
Miller applied to have the money released in 2022 and B.C.’s Director of Civil Forfeiture filed a lawsuit the next year, saying the money was proceeds of unlawful activity, and now the judge has ordered Miller to explain how he acquired the money.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 23, 2025.
The Canadian Press
