Toronto woman at heart of lipstick Ponzi scheme gets four years in prison and $610K fine
An Ontario Ponzi scheme operator who purported to be making lipstick to bilk her victims out of millions of dollars has been sentenced to four years in prison and fined $610,856.
If she can’t pay the fine levied by the Ontario Court of Justice within five years of her prison sentence expiring, Glenda Marie Esteves must serve another 18 months behind bars.
“I find Ms. Esteves is entirely responsible for the financial loss of every victim of her fraudulent scheme. She was the sole beneficiary of the millions of dollars she fraudulently obtained. The location of the money is unknown,” Justice Cidalia Faria wrote in a recent decision out of Toronto.
The Crown filed 22 victim impact statements in Esteves’ case.
“Reading these statements is to read a litany of heartache and hardship, broken promises and broken dreams, deep betrayal, and significant financial loss,” Faria said. “The impact has been wide-ranging, including not only negative economic consequences, but psychological damage so severe that some victims became physically ill.”
Personal losses for her victims ranged from “as low as $8,750 to as high as $273,578.15,” said the judge, noting these “were the life savings they lost, or the debts they incurred to invest and are now liable to pay for.”
The Crown pegged total losses for Esteves’ victims at nearly $5 million, but the judge determined that their total “readily ascertainable” losses were $610,856.
Esteves’ “elaborate fraud,” took place over four years, said the judge.
“She was the sole owner of ‘Mac Glamour Inc.’ Both before and after she incorporated this company, she enticed investors to invest in her venture with high rates of return,” Faria said.
“She purported to make and sell lipstick. She claimed to obtain materials from MAC, a well-known cosmetics company, mix these materials, create her own lipstick, and then sell these lipsticks to a modelling company called Q Modelling NYC. Ms. Esteves claimed the profit margin was the difference between the cost of the raw materials from MAC, and the sale price of the finished product to Q Modelling.”
But “the actual production of lipsticks did not exist,” said the judge.
“Ms. Esteves never made lipsticks. The money investors provided her was never invested in the company called Mac Glamour as she claimed.”
Instead, Esteves “obtained investment money by forging various banking documents and used them to persuade investors that Mac Glamour had millions of dollars in a corporate account. Mac Glamour had no such account.”
She used the forged bank documents to put investors who were owed money at ease “and persuaded them to invest further amounts,” Faria said. “Money that was paid out as an ‘investment return’ was money received from other investors. The business model was thereby operated as a Ponzi scheme.”
Many of her victims “were from her ethnic community of Filipino origin,” said the judge. “The total number of victims Ms. Esteves defrauded has never been quantified.”
Esteves pleaded guilty in 2022 to fraud over $5,000, uttering a forged document, and committing theft under false pretenses, between January 2015 and October 2019.
“Born in the Philippines in 1974, Ms. Esteves is an educated 50-year-old married woman with two adult children,” the judge said in her decision dated July 31.
“Esteves is the oldest of eight siblings, six of whom still live in the Philippines, while she cares for and provides for the youngest sibling who lives with her in Toronto. She grew up in poverty and left her country of origin to make a better life for herself.”
Her husband was also charged in the Ponzi scheme investigation. But Esteves told the court she “deceived” him as well, and he “is not responsible for any fraudulent conduct.”
The author of her pre-sentence report noted “Esteves has lost support in her Filipino community as many were her victims. She has become sad and depressed as a result, decreasing her social interactions, and focusing on her family.”
Esteves expressed remorse, telling the court she was in “full control of the operation” and that she “takes full responsibility.”
Esteves said the venture “progressed from borrowing money, accumulating debt, and then, when she was unable to pay her loans, she started the elaborate scheme to obtain money. She lied to people and her lies became bigger. She said she began to believe her own lies which spiraled her out of control. She apologized to the victims, her family and her community accepting the entirety of her blameworthiness.”
One victim, Anthony Wang, “lost his savings which made him unable to buy a home for his six-person family,” said the decision. “They were all forced to live in an 800 (square) foot apartment during the pandemic. He had to move to Alberta to be able to afford a home. He became physically ill and developed a medical condition that cost him financially and made him miss work. He does not trust his own family anymore as they were the ones who invited him into the scheme.”
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