Ex-prominent business owner facing 31 counts of fraud after latest police probe

STRATFORD – Kevin Larson, a former outstanding enterprise proprietor on this Southwestern Ontario metropolis, was arrested and charged this week with 31 counts of fraud.

Stratford police mentioned Friday this latest investigation began in Could 2023 after a grievance of fraud was made in opposition to Larson, who owned a number of eating places and different business, monetary and improvement companies in Stratford and space.

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Officers arrested the 37-year-old Stratford resident on Thursday afternoon. Larson was charged with 10 counts of fraud with a price greater than $5,000 and 21 counts of fraud with a price lower than $5,000 from a sequence of complaints from March 25, 2022, to Oct. 17, 2022, in keeping with court docket paperwork.

He was launched on an enterprise with a Feb. 10 court docket date.

Larson’s mounting authorized troubles began when Ontario’s highest court docket upheld a Superior Court docket of Justice determination requiring him to pay an area builder greater than $530,000 after being present in breach of contract and in breach of belief.

In its written determination in February 2022, a three-person panel mentioned Superior Court docket Justice A. Duncan Grace didn’t make an error in 2021 when he discovered Larson Properties Partnership Company and Larson, the corporate’s majority shareholder, have been legally answerable for debt owed to Feltz Design Construct following work the contractor accomplished on a downtown Stratford pub and butchery in October 2019.

In April 2023, Larson was charged with one rely of fraud after it was alleged he racked up $65,000 of debt by accessing his ex-partner’s checking account and bank cards with out her data over a three-year interval.

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Larson was arrested and charged Jan. 26, 2024, with 9 counts of fraud with a price greater than $5,000, 9 counts of uttering a solid doc and one rely of false pretences following a police investigation that started in February 2023.

In accordance with court docket paperwork on the time of that arrest, Larson allegedly defrauded one complainant in 2019 of greater than $138,000 through the use of invested cash with out the complainant’s permission or data. Larson additionally allegedly meant, by false pretence, to defraud a complainant of $1,600 round Dec. 1, 2023, paperwork confirmed.

Along with the prison costs, Larson – beforehand the proprietor of Larson Properties Partnership and Cooper Improvement Inc. and Larson Monetary Options – has confronted a raft of civil fits in six Ontario cities, together with Stratford, from 2006 to 2024.

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