Earl Jones is missing- but where was everybody else?

Where was everybody when Earl Jones was wining and dining and golfing his way through the West Island with the life savings of his clients?

Apparently, all it took was one phone call to the AMF from a suspicious Earl Jones client and the AMF acted immediately to freeze the company accounts and begin their investigation, even though, as it has been reported, neither Earl Jones nor his company were ever registered with the AMF and so its clients do not have access to any of the protections the AMF is mandated to provide financial consumers.

But isn’t the AMF supposed to protect the public against unregistered financial advisors? Since one would expect that advisors who take the trouble to meet AMF criteria by registering themselves have at least some intention of conducting legitimate business, it would seem prudent for the AMF to be on the lookout for those who are operating under the legal radar.

How difficult is it to find these questionable operators? Two clicks on the internet and you have access to 278 listings on the Canada 411 website under the heading “Financial Planning Consultants”. Might someone at the AMF peruse these and similar listings from time to time and verify if each consultant is duly licensed? By the way, type in “Earl Jones” on Canada 411 and the contact information complete with a Google map pops up all nice and shiny.

Lest we leave all the blame with the AMF however- who indeed may find the wheeling and dealings of the Wild West Island difficult to infiltrate- let’s ask ourselves how Earl Jones and his corporation was able to conduct business these past 30 years without raising the concerns of any of the financial industry professionals that he surely would have had contact with. After all, he must have been dealing with one or more banks for his transactions- did no one do a background check or notice anything unusual about his business? He would have had to provide financial statements to the CRA and Revenue Quebec when he filed his corporate income tax. Were these reports not prepared by an accounting firm? If clients’ homes were being remortgaged without their consent – what notaries and/or lawyers were executing the legal documents? And finally, did one man run this whole business by himself? Who was working for Earl Jones?

It’s distressful enough to see that people so readily trusted this man without verifying his credentials or how their funds were being held. It is even more distressful to think that those industry insiders who should have been looking out for the public interest never saw anything in 30 years of unlicensed dealings worthy of further investigation. But of this I am sure, that there are more Bernie Madoffs and Earl Joneses out there, so please, let the buyer beware.