KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, June 4, 2009
Standing in the hall outside courtroom number two, he could be a young lawyer. He looks healthy, well-fed, and is just beginning to show that 30-something heaviness to the cheeks.
He checks his cell phone, punching on the keys as though he’s texting. He smoothes over his crisp dark suit and his red silk tie.
It’s not until Bryan Michael Tickell walks into the courtroom that the cracks in his upwardly mobile demeanor begin to show. The 30 year old is accused of 14 charges involving forgery, breach of trust, theft and fraud covering a 10-month period where he worked for the Public Guardian and Trustee of B.C. (PGT) as a case manager of more than 200 clients. The PGT alleged after a forensic investigation with Deloitte & Touche that he had defrauded or attempted to defraud 12 of those people. In September 2008, Tickell pleaded guilty to three of those charges.
As he enters the courtroom, he turns a pair of aviator sunglasses in his hand, pacing the isle with a slow swagger, a little too slow. It’s as though Tickell needs to keep moving. His thick shoulders are squared, his chin juts forward.
His lawyer, Scott Wright, indicates it’s too soon to sit down, and Tickell stands waiting for the judge who will deliver his sentence.
Not much is known about Tickell, and what is known is sometimes hard to believe, according to Justice Tony Dohm.
But the court does know that Tickell’s job was to help manage the estates and finances of PGT clients, because, after being deemed mentally unfit, they couldn’t take care of their own affairs.
He lied to get that job, referencing a fake degree he’d hoodwinked from the University of Carleton and a non-existent one from the University of Calgary. He provided a phony-reference, one John Murray, a false identity he created thanks to an Alberta forklift operator who lost his wallet.
Former West Vanner Phyllis Lowdell, in her 80s, was one of his victims, and last fall Tickell pleaded guilty to defrauding her of a Maple Ridge property. He had it transferred into his own name for “$1.00 plus love and affection,” and flipped the property for $1 million.
Friend and unofficial guardian Ross Henderson and his wife Elaine Henderson remember meeting Lowdell three years ago, shortly before she came under the supervision of the PGT’s new recruit, Tickell.
It was spring time. Ross Henderson found her wandering down the street in their British Properties neighbourhood, her pants held up around her 90-pound frame with a Barbie pin. She needed help with her taxes, and she needed groceries, she told the Hendersons. Over the next six months, Elaine Henderson would bring meals over to Lowdell’s house every few days, but she often didn’t answer the door, so Henderson left the food on the hood of Lowdell’s old car.
In September 2006, Elaine Henderson crawled through Lowdell’s window and found her face down on the floor. According to Henderson, they took her to Lions Gate Hospital with a serious infection and soon after she was deemed mentally unfit to run her own affairs, and was entrusted to the PGT.
Tickell managed her case and many others like hers in his time at the PGT – between fall 2006 and summer 2007. There was Barry Boris Derlago, a victim of Tickell’s forgery, to which Tickell pleaded guilty last fall. A PGT client, Derlago suffered an aorta rupture in February 2007 and at that point Tickell was told Derlago didn’t have long to live, according to the PGT. The next month, Tickell had drafted a new will for Derlago in which 20 per cent of his $1.3 million estate was designated to Tickell, listed as “My (Derlago’s) longtime friend’s grandson,” reported by The Outlook last year. The fraudster tricked two caretakers into witnessing the fraudulent will, telling them they were signing a transfer of petty cash.
According to Justice Tony Dohm, when Tickell left his job at the public guardian it coincided with Derlago’s death, and “that’s what brought Mr. Tickell’s house of cards down.”
Derlago’s brother, Ivan Derlago, claimed it was when he flew from Winnipeg to North Vancouver in August 2007 to bury his brother – and found that he was no longer listed as the executor of his brother’s estate – that the PGT became aware of Tickell’s fraud.
The PGT has said it was internally aware of the fraud and that even if Derlago hadn’t died, they would have caught Tickell’s flub within the month due to internal controls.
Tickell was arrested soon after, and, according to PGT spokesperson Indiana Matters, he asked to speak with PGT head Jay Chalke. When Chalke arrived at the North Vancouver cell, Tickell allegedly relished the opportunity to taunt his former higher-up.
In Justice Dohm’s reasons for sentencing, he explains of that incident, “Mr. Tickell told Mr. Chalke that he had done other things, but he would not assist the authorities in finding those.”
He repeatedly told investigators, “It was just so easy,” and, according to a psychologist’s assessment, Tickell enjoyed talking about his crimes and also the “psychological challenge” of stealing, forging and conning others.
While the psychologist’s report said that Tickell showed “a large number of features” of a psychopath – a grandiose vision of himself, a lack of empathy for his victims, a self-centred vision of the world – he didn’t qualify because he hadn’t shown the unstable, antisocial lifestyle that typifies psychopaths.
Justice Dohm rejects that line. He also dismisses the letters from Tickell’s family – his mother, his cousin, an uncle and a friend – as personal observations from people who “have obviously not known of the other side of him (Tickell).”
“It is hard to know much about Mr. Tickell’s background and antecedents,” Justice Dohm notes. “He is profoundly dishonest and manipulative.”
Leaning back in his chair through the hour-long summary from the judge, Tickell is just that, apparently impassive, unknowable. As to how he has chosen to present himself in the past, what is known are photos from social networking sites. Those images now removed from the internet could certainly qualify as “grandiose” – one where he flexes, shirtless, glaring up at the camera, or another where he poses in a white singlet, hand over his shoulder, his head cocked. In all photos he is serious, not smiling.
Perhaps the most fitting is one black and white snap where Tickell stands behind a screen, partially obscured, his face in shadow. In each he stares straight into the camera.
In the sentencing, Justice Dohm gives Tickell four years for defrauding the PGT and six years apiece for his crimes against Derlago and Lowdell, all to be served concurrently. The sentence is one year more than requested by Crown counsel.
Phyllis Lowdell is pleased. The elderly woman is now 50 pounds heavier than she was three years ago, and more alert since moving to a North Vancouver seniors living facility where she sometimes hosts the Hendersons for dinner.
Elaine Henderson helps her down the courthouse steps, where TV cameras await. Lowdell concentrates on shuffling forward with her walker as she notes, “He (Tickell) just thinks he’s damned smart, that’s all.” She was previously quoted as having resented his imposition as her grandson. “That’s why he did it in the first place.”
The money recovered from Tickell’s sale of her $1-million property will go to charity, she and the Hendersons say.
There are other alleged victims out there, and their names are on public record, but the PGT cautions about drawing undue attention to “vulnerable people,” according to PGT spokesperson Indiana Matters. “They’re not in a position to respond or take care of themselves . . . Normally we don’t discuss anything at all about our clients . . . The law has determined they need protection.”
Matters says all 12 of the people or their estates have been reimbursed “plus interest.”
In that list is one man whose PT Cruiser Tickell stole, and the woman who found her Standard Life Pension and American Express Travelers cheques fraudulently converted for Tickell’s personal use. Others whose credit cards or TransLink passes or cheques ended up in the hands of their case worker.
The PGT says after the nine-month investigation, no outstanding cases of frauds remain in Tickell’s caseload. According to court records, that investigation process topped out over $1 million in legal fees, consulting and staffing costs.
The organization also says it’s revamped its hiring and internal checks and balances, so that opportunists like Tickell won’t get through the door again to have a crack at the 32,000 clients under its care.
But Tickell’s boast to investigators echoes with a creepy hollowness, “It was just so easy.”
Fraud might not be so easy for Tickell in the future, however, as Justice Dohm has ordered him to provide a DNA sample within 30 days, to protect against any future identity theft.
The measure will make it tougher for Tickell to continue “heaping deceit upon deceit.”
Even at this moment where perhaps the most is known about Tickell – what he’s done, where he’s headed – he shows no emotion. Led from the courtroom in cuffs he only squares his shoulders, stares straight ahead as the sheriff ushers him into the next phase of his life behind bars.
