A Kelowna man accused of scamming a former Google executive of millions of dollars was found guilty in a B.C court on Friday.
Bart Woytowicz, who is described in court documents as a “financially successful” founding member of Google, transferred $2 million US into a Danimal Productions Inc. bank account owned by Kelowna resident, Dan Keith Andersen.
The transfer of the money was based on the specific stipulation that the money was seen as a loan and wouldn’t be moved from the account for any reason. Despite the stipulations the court found that Anderson knowingly misappropriated Woytowicz’s money by causing Danimal to transfer it to a Spanish company, Rubix Project Management SC. The money was never seen again.
In his written decision of the case, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gary Weatherill said; “If this case can be summed up with an adage of life, it is this: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”
The duo began dealing in business together in 2010.
At that time, one of Woytowicz’s post-Google projects was a start-up 3D video company known as Parallax. He’d invested a great deal of cash and wanted out, Weatherill wrote in the decision.
Anderson sought to buy Parallax and create his own 3-D movie company within Kelowna, which is where their business dealings began. In late July 2010, Andersen met with Woytowicz and had numerous telephone calls and meetings with him in Kelowna. Andersen told Woytowicz that he was in the process of raising funds through the sale of patents and that through his negotiations with Rubix, he expected to receive in excess of $200 million USD from patent sales.
To finalize the deal with Rubix, however, Anderson needed to convince European investors that Danimal had financial substance.
He convinced Woytowicz to place $2 million US into Danimal’s HSBC bank account in Kelowna for the Europeans to look at to confirm financial substance. The money, he said, would be frozen or blocked and would not be moved out of the account or be touched in any way. Woytowicz, he said, would be repaid by Sept. 30, 2010.
The money disappeared.
Read the full story over at Agassiz-Harrison Observer.
