News Release

Released: February 16, 1999 Contact: Michael Bernard
899-6500 or
(BC only) 1-800-373-6393 Vancouver -- A man who bilked 10 B.C. residents of more than $150,000 by promising them shares in a well-known junior mining company has been barred from securities markets for life and assessed a $100,000 administrative penalty by the B.C. Securities Commission.

Norman Graham Armstrong carried out his fraudulent scheme between February 1993 and March 1997, encouraging the residents to give him money to invest in Dia Met Minerals Ltd., a promising stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Instead of buying shares, Armstrong used the money for his own use, including paying off gambling debts.

Armstrong, now an inmate at the Elbow Lake Institution in Harrison Mills, B.C., did not attend the hearing. He pled guilty in 1997 to seven criminal counts of fraud over $5,000 and was sentenced to two years in jail, three years on probation, and was ordered to pay $139,159 in compensation to his victims.

"Through a deliberate, calculated and deceitful plan, Armstrong methodically befriended several British Columbia residents," a commission panel said in a decision released today.

Armstrong, who was not registered to sell securities, told his victims he was a helicopter pilot employed by Dia Met for which he was also purchasing certain mineral claims. He also said he was a close personal friend of the president of Dia Met and that he could sell his victims shares of the diamond company at a preferred price, as low as 10 cents a share. He told them he could sell the shares later on the Toronto Stock Exchange for $5 a share.

"Once he felt confident in their trust of him, he manipulated them for all they were worth. A true con artist, he had an uncanny knack of zeroing in on his victims’ vulnerabilities and important beliefs to get them to part with their money and to keep them at bay when their suspicions became aroused. His conduct is simply despicable."

Armstrong’s victims included a retired couple who gave up $24,000 of their life savings to him and a recent immigrant who handed over $2,000. In the last stages of his scam, Armstrong persuaded the couple to borrow money for him on their credit cards and tried to get them to take out a mortgage on their home.

The decision prohibits Armstrong from ever trading in securities markets, from being a director or an officer of any company or engaging in investor relations activities.

In addition to sending a strong message to Armstrong and others like him, the panel said the decision holds an important message for the investing public.

"As a final note and as this case illustrates, it is our view that it is also in the public interest to warn the public again about its responsibility to investigate before investing. Some well placed questions would have likely uncovered, as the retired couple later acknowledged, the lies that Armstrong so easily held out as true."

"Similarly the investing public should immediately question, if they find themselves in circumstances similar to the ones that the retired couple were in, why they are not buying securities through a person who is registered under the (Securities) Act."

A copy of the decision is available on the commission’s web site (www.bcsc.bc.ca) or by calling Communications Manager Michael Bernard at 899-6500.

The B.C. Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating trading in securities and exchange contracts in the province.