A repeat fraudster who trapped nearly 200 people through a fictitious cottage rental scheme during the pandemic was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse. “Society is in danger as soon as he comes out,” warned a judge in 2017.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
Sentenced for similar crimes at the time, Kevin Goulet was then described as a pathological liar. He had notably claimed to have been admitted to medicine at the university and had multiplied the “schemes” and the scams to extract funds from his ex-spouse. Five years later, the fraudster does not seem to have understood the lesson.
The 30-year-old Laval resident pleaded guilty to fraud charges on Thursday, admitting to having fraudulently rented chalets and trailers between February 2020 and November 2021 throughout Quebec. During this period, many Quebecers sought refuge in a chalet to escape the pandemic.
His modus operandi was always the same: using fake or stolen identities, Kevin Goulet created fake cottage rental ads on Kijiji, Facebook or the GoDaddy platform. He easily found photos online of cabins that did not belong to him.
The fraudster demanded a deposit from his victims to reserve the chalet and provided a false rental contract. Unsurprisingly, the victims then found themselves in the water. No less than 197 people have been scammed by Kevin Goulet’s scheme. A fraud over $70,000. The majority of deposits were $200 to $400, but three victims had more than $2,000 cheated by the fraudster.
Crown prosecutor M.e Alexandre Dubois and defense lawyer Me Annie Boyer presented a joint suggestion of five years imprisonment, which was endorsed by Judge Sylvain Lépine. Kevin Goulet will also have to reimburse most of the victims under a restitution order.
“Deceit”
This is not the first time that Kevin Goulet has found himself behind bars for fraud. He had been sentenced to 42 months in prison in 2017 at the Sherbrooke courthouse for very similar crimes.
At the time, the fraudster had devised a luxury chalet rental scheme, in addition to bamboozling his ex-spouse for months with a series of outlandish lies.
Judge Claire Desgens did not mince words to describe Kevin Goulet’s “cheating”, according to the transcripts of the July 13, 2017 hearing in Granby.
“What I heard as evidence today is perversion. I understand the lack of scruples that Mr. may have had in relation to the victims of the chalets. It’s a thing. Playing on the vulnerability of certain people is quite another thing. To have ridden for months, to have lived with someone, to have made him believe that he loved him to the point of having marriage plans, to have during that time emptied his accounts, it’s something, “said the judge.
The magistrate had been particularly marked by this file, to the point of saying that it would be the one she would remember “the longest”. “We can’t stay indifferent to that. We may be a judge, we see all the colors, but this file is a file that is special, ”said Judge Desgens.