BURSTA ex-banker who operated in Kelowna is being fined over $1 million for transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars from elderly clients to bank accounts he controlled.
Scotiabank representative Marc-Antoine Ladeiro was found by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) to have have “willfully and deceptively misappropriated $354,700 from an elderly couple” before disappearing entirely.
“His deliberate and surreptitious scheme to misappropriate client funds was a clear, protracted and egregious breach of his obligations,” the investigating panel wrote in its decision.
Ladeiro had worked as banking advisor in France in 2010, where he stayed until 2018 when he then moved to Canada.
After moving to Canada, Ladeiro worked as a dealing representative in another firm before he moved to Scotiabank in 2019, where he acted as a dealing representative in mutual funds.
The decision states that Ladeiro first came into contact with the couple – referred to as NT and MT, who were at the time in their late 80s and early 90s, and had held investments with Scotiabank – on April 27, 2020.
From that point on, it seems Ladeiro was the only person responsible for the couples’ Scotiabank file, being the only person who added notes to their bank file.
On July 22, 2020, Ladeiro opened three savings accounts at his Scotiabank Branch that were opened under the name of KO. Ladeiro was listed as the only advisor who made notes for the KO’s accounts.
A few days later on July 28, Ladeiro started withdrawing money from one of the clients’ joint accounts to another through six transactions, despite receiving no instructions from the couple to do so.
These six withdrawals totalled $233,504.47 and were done over nearly two years, with the last of the withdrawals happening on Feb. 8, 2022.
Ladeiro would then transfer the money, along with an additional $121,195.53 from one of the clients’ other accounts to the KO accounts through 700 transactions.
The money was then “layered back and forth between KO’s accounts” and then withdrawn in hundreds of transactions using e-transfers.
Of the money, $264,609.12 was put into an account owned by Ladeiro that is in another bank.
Another $89,515.97 were seemingly deposited into online gambling sites, as the money was transferred to a payment processing entity used by those organizations.
The decision states that a smaller portion of the withdrawn money was transferred to a charity as Ladeiro emptied his account. This “small remaining amount” adds up to around $574.91.
A few days after, on Feb. 14, Ladeiro quit his job at Scotiabank and told his manager that he was leaving for personal reasons and heading back to Europe.
It was then reported that local RCMP starting investigating Ladeiro for suspected identity theft and fraud involving the KO accounts, who is believed to be a non-existent person.
The RCMP investigation found that Ladeiro had faked discussions between himself and KO to put in the file’s notes.
It was also found that Ladeiro used the same computer to access both his personal accounts and the KO accounts, which were also “repeatedly accessed within minutes of each other using the same IP address.”
On Feb. 2, 2023, one member of the couple, NT, confirmed that he didn’t direct Ladeiro to send the money to the KO accounts.
The spouse, MT, had passed away in 2021.
Disappearing act
From July 2022 to October 2025, there were repeated attempts to find Ladeiro or make him appear before a panel.
None of these attempts were successful.
CIRO staff first attempted to contact him in July and September of 2022 through mail and phone but no responses were received.
In 2023, CIRO used a skip tracer – a person who finds people who have disappeared, often employed to find people who have unpaid bills – who searched for Ladeiro using documents and databases from B.C., Canada and France, but was unable to find him.
CIRO staff would then try his personal email to which no response was given.
In 2025, Ladeiro’s CIRO hearing would happen.
He was given notices but did not appear at the initial appearance on July 29 or to the merits hearing on Oct. 14.
“This is a case of a respondent dropping out of sight after resigning from his employment with a Dealer Member and ceasing to be a registrant in the securities industry. The Respondent has not been located despite attempts to contact, interview and deliver documents to him,” the decision reads.
Ladeiro’s fines
When NT was contacted in 2023, the bank subsequently compensated him for the loss of the misappropriated funds “plus additional amounts for foregone gains.”
The decision in 2025 ruled that Ladeiro was deliberate in his actions.
“We find that between July 2020 and February 14, 2022, the Respondent willfully and deceptively misappropriated $354,700 from two elderly clients of the Dealer Member and Bank. The misconduct involved recording false notes in the Clients’ account files and making hundreds of unauthorized transfers from their accounts to synthetic accounts that the Respondent created and controlled,” the decision reads.
In total, the panel decided that Ladeiro would have to pay a fine of $1,064,100; three times the amount he had obtained from the couple.
He would also be on the hook for an additional $18,612, compensating CIRO for the investigation and prosecution.
Ladeiro was also permanently banned from conducting securities related business in any capacity with any bank of CIRO.
Despite the decision, it was stated that Ladeiro “has not repaid anything or been held accountable by criminal or civil proceedings, and there is no reason to believe that he will.”