Alleged con man Philip Chancey has trial pushed to 2025
Philip Chancey, a Mount Pearl man who stands accused of swindling investors out of more than $350,000 on fraudulent business deals, won't see the inside of a courtroom until April 2025.
Chancey's trial on two fraud charges was set to begin next Monday but it has been delayed due to the health of his lawyer, Don Powell.
Citing "new evidence" coming to light, Chancey had filed an application to delay his trial that Crown prosecutor Deidre Badcock had planned to oppose during a hearing Monday morning.
After learning of Powell's health issues, however, she consented to the delay as long as Chancey promised to waive his right to a speedy trial.
Chancey, on speaker phone in the courtroom, said, "Yes, your honour" when asked if he was OK with the deal.
The next available dates were not until next April.
Chancey is accused of taking money from two investors in 2015 and 2016. In one case, tradesman Jerome Groves says Chancey took more than $50,000 from him for the rights to open an electric vehicle dealership.
Jerome Groves said he thought he stumbled across the deal of a lifetime when he met Philip Chancey. (Eddy Kennedy/CBC)
In the other, a terminally ill Clarenville man named Tom Drodge gave Chancey his entire life savings — about $300,000, according to his wife — for a similar promise involving an electric vehicle dealership.
No actual business materialized in either case. He was charged in 2021 over the allegations involving Groves and in 2023 over the allegations involving Drodge. Both cases were combined into one trial.
In a statement to CBC News in 2019, Chancey said he was just a businessman who had suffered some bad breaks.
"I have over the years tried to work and establish various business opportunities. Yes, some failed, I admit this," he wrote. "Throughout the country, numerous people have tried and failed. I am one of them. The key is to never give up."
CBC Investigates profiled Groves's claims in 2019 and discovered a list of other complaints that did not result in criminal charges. Chancey was accused of taking $1 million from global leasing giant Cox Automotive, $600,000 from auctioneering firm Lyon & Sons, and $400,000 from Hickman Automotive.
Court records also showed Chancey had been been taken to small claims court at least a dozen times, for amounts between $375 and $7,752.
He's incorporated businesses in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia going back to the 1980s.
The most recent one — Twenty Twenty Capital Corporation — was incorporated in St. John's in 2020.
While it was listed as not being in good standing in 2023, public records show Chancey filed annual returns for the past three years in January to get the company back in good standing.
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