The bad-paying sommelier tries to retrain under a new identity

The sommelier who cheated dozens of employees, customers and suppliers over the last decade is now trying to retrain as a nail professional using a new identity.

“This lady is something. In fact, it has to stop,” says Rebecca Giard, owner of the Pure Bar Beauté beauty salon in Sorel-Tracy.

On February 9, the 31-year-old businesswoman discovered, discouraged, the deception. The nail technician who worked in her business under the name Julie-Catherine Gagné was truly Catherine Levasseur.

In Varennes

Last May, our Bureau of Investigation reported that this sommelier, known for her fake wine tastings in Quebec, fled around twenty people demanding thousands of dollars from her. We also learned that, unable to contact her, the courts were looking for her and that she was the target of around ten civil suits.

It would appear that Levasseur had been in a rented house in Varennes for around two years, according to what was observed The newspaper.

Metamorphosis

For her part, Rebecca Giard says she met the 51-year-old woman last April.

“She asked to have a metamorphosis, a big change, to have short, red hair. When we put the pieces of the puzzle together, we understand,” she realizes.

Then, in December, the one who boasted of having worked as a nail technician for two decades convinced M^me Giard to rent him a space in his living room. However, she would have avoided signing a contract, said M.^me Giard.

In good faith, the owner still offered a preferential rate to “Julie-Catherine”, who was supposedly new to the region, and without customers.

M^me Giard would have trusted her in particular because of the online training she offered for more than $1,200 to become a “Nails Boss”.

“The photos she showed me of her work were obviously false,” M firmly believes.^me Giard, to whom several dissatisfied customers have complained. I really wonder if she has a degree in nail art.”

More excuses

Shortly after, the same pretexts that the sommelier would have already used to her multiple creditors reappeared to justify her late payments. She now owes this owner approximately $600.

“Gastro, her boyfriend’s father died, she had to take a plane to go I don’t remember where. Then, her boyfriend left her, so that’s why she couldn’t pay anymore,” says M.^me Giard.

The latter quickly ended their agreement, believing that they had been taken for granted.

“It’s not even necessarily about the money. It’s really for the fact that she got in here. I felt cheated,” she said.

Stigma

For his part, Levasseur did not want to answer our questions. Instead, she sent a statement in which she claimed to have initiated a process of changing her name “in order to remove the stigma” associated with Catherine Levasseur.

Regarding M’s beauty salon^me Giard, she indicates that “the goal was simply to have a base to carry out aesthetic services, a question of earning [sa] life, in peace.

By signing “Julie-Catherine”, she describes the denunciation of her ex-collaborators as “vendetta”, and says she has a blank notebook.

According to her partner Daniel Carette, met in the parking lot of their home, where four cars were parked, including a BMW XT model and an Audi TT, Levasseur “never claimed to be a professional” in nail application.

In the neighborhood, residents told the Newspaper having seen at least one bailiff attempting to deliver papers by hand to M^me Levasseur, without success.

Who is Catherine Levasseur?

• Known in 2013 for having fooled hundreds of people thanks to the Tuango discount, offering wine tastings in hotels, which never took place
• She opened and closed at least four restaurants during the pandemic, leaving bills and salaries unpaid for more than twenty people, our Bureau of Investigation confirmed
• She also uses the names Gagné, Levasseur Gagné or L. Gagné