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reported in 2006, “He was jailed for five years for bigamy, dis- honesty offenses, failing to register as a sex offender and ille- gally possessing a stun gun. Sentencing Jordan, Judge Thomas Corrie at Oxford Crown Court said: ‘You are a con man, a con- victed pedophile and a bigamist. You are an inveterate exploiter of vulnerable women, not just financially but also emotion- ally.’” When Lewis confronted her fiancé with these revelations, he didn’t deny any of them. Aghast at what Jordan, then 48, had done to her, Lewis strung


him along for a while until she lured him to a parking lot in Cherry Hill, NJ, in April 2014, where police arrested him and charged him with sexual assault, theſt by deception and imper- sonating law enforcement. In November 2014, Jordan pleaded guilty to defrauding Lewis of US$5,000 and, at press time, was awaiting sentencing. The story does not end there, however. Prosecutors had initially tried to charge Jordan with sexual


assault by coercion, but a grand jury refused to indict him on that charge. That did not sit well with New Jersey State Assemblyman Troy Singleton, a Democrat. Following a meeting with Lewis, Singleton introduced a bill in November 2014 that would create the crime of “sexual assault by fraud,” which it defined as “an act of sexual penetration to which a person has given consent because the actor has misrepresented the purpose of the act or has represented he is someone he is not.” Fraud invalidates any semblance of consent just as forcible


sexual contact does, the politician said. “This legislation is designed to provide our state’s judiciary with another tool to assess situations where this occurs and potentially provide a legal remedy to those circumstances.” If New Jersey enacts the legislation, it won’t be the first state


to do so. “According to a memo by the Office of Legislative Services written at Singleton’s request, at least five states — Tennessee, Alabama, California, Colorado and Montana — have some sort of crime for sex by fraud,” an article on NJ.com noted. Canada does not have any legislation of this nature. Attempts to link sex and fraud have existed since at least


1997, when Jane Larson, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law in Evanston, Ill., published an article in the Columbia Law Review entitled “A Feminist Rethinking of Seduction.” She suggested a new tort — fraud in the induce- ment of sexual relations. In researching her article, Larson said she was surprised to learn that “higher standards of honesty and fair dealing apply in commercial than in personal relationships.” Whether Singleton’s bill passes is uncertain, as many oppo-


nents consider the legislation in its current wording too vague, wide-reaching and unnecessary (existing sexual assault and fraud laws, they argue, are sufficient and working). And while the proposed sex-fraud legislation, as well as those


in other jurisdictions, is aimed at perpetrators (usually men) who misrepresent themselves in order to have sex with a partner, there is another potential benefit for those concerned about light sentences meted out to fraudsters. Forensic investigators know only too well that a significant number of fraudsters seduce a partner for the sole purpose of scamming their victim financially. In March 2014, for example, a “convicted fraudster and Iraqi refugee with a long history of ripping off women [was] back in trouble with the law, charged with defrauding a BC woman of $88,000,” CBC News reported. Faris Namrud, who oſten posed as an Italian, had previously


served jail time for romancing victims out of hundreds of thou- sands of dollars. The 46-year-old was arrested for the 11th time in 10 years for allegedly defrauding 66-year-old Kasandra Harfield of Vancouver out of $88,000. Last November Namrud pleaded guilty to six counts of fraud


over $5,000. He was awaiting sentencing at the time of writing and could face deportation once his sentence is served. It’s unlikely Namrud’s punishment will make up for the damage he did to Harfield and his many other victims. “It is a


In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the eighth circle of hell was reserved for fraudsters, including financial seducers


lot to wrap my head around,” Harfield said. “On so many levels — financially, emotionally. It’s just destabilizing.” Just as financial fraud is not a victimless crime, when it’s


accompanied by a false seduction the pain and sense of betrayal experienced by victims can be absolutely devastating and difficult to rebound from. If prosecutors in such cases could charge the fraudster with


sexual assault — rape, in some situations — not only could the perpetrator, if convicted, find himself facing far more jail time, it might act as a deterrent to someone who previously perceived the worst case scenario, if caught, to be a fairly light sentence. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the eighth circle of hell was


reserved for fraudsters, including financial seducers. At present, many fraudsters don’t find themselves burning for too long or at too high a temperature when caught. Sex-fraud legislation might just turn up the heat to an appropriate temperature.


DAVID MALAMED, CPA, CA•IFA, CPA (ILL.), CCF, CFE, CFI, is a partner in forensic accounting at Grant Thornton LLP in Toronto


MARCH 2015 | CPA MAGAZINE | 53


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