Lawyers make closing arguments in case against Cedric OatesBy Owain Johnston-BarnesA man charged with defrauding a schoolteacher of her life savings acted as a manipulative predator according to prosecutors.However defence lawyer Charles Richardson said defendant Cedric Oates did exactly what he promised he would with the complainant’s money.Mr Oates, 42, denies a single charge of using false or misleading statements to induce Dianne Laird to invest in a plan to buy, repair and resell foreclosed homes in 2009.Ms Laird, a former physical education teacher at Dellwood, told the court that Mr Oates repeatedly assured her that she would see her entire investment of $345,000 returned in a matter of months, but not a single penny has returned more than three years later.Mr Oates, a school guidance counsellor, yesterday declined the opportunity to testify on his own behalf, but he told police in a 2010 interview that he had warned Ms Laird that there was no guarantee as to when she would have her investment returned.He told the officers that the money had been used to purchase and flip two homes, but he could not immediately pay back Ms Laird because the money was still invested in properties.Summarising the Crown’s case, prosecutor Nicole Smith said that Mr Oates used his knowledge of psychology and his position of authority as her basketball coach, to convince her to invest in the scheme.“When he found out that Ms Laird had a savings of $345,000, he saw opportunity, and he circled her like Jaws,” Ms Smith said. “As soon as Cedric Oates knew what Ms Laird had, he formed that intention.“That intention to mislead her, and he did so. To lie to her, and he did so.“He misrepresented. He lied to her about the true state of affairs, about the return she will get in her investment.“He was dishonest. He was dishonest to benefit from those investments himself.”She argued that if Mr Oates had any intention to repay Ms Laird, he would have kept some form of documentation to support his case, but he did not.Ms Smith also noted that while Ms Laird said she was told the all of her investment would be used to purchase foreclosed homes, none of the first $125,000 was used to that effect.And while she was later told that her $345,000 investment would go towards a “48th Street Project,” Ms Smith said that the only 48th Street project found by US investigators was a publicly-funded freeway improvement project.Ms Smith said: “Isn’t it a coincidence that the very amount of money that she initially told Mr Oates she had in her savings was the very cost of the 48th Street Project?”She also noted that $6,000 of the money invested by Ms Laird appeared to be going to personal expenses such as expenditures at a hair salon and Upper Crust.“That wasn’t part of the plan that she gave up her money for, to spend on personal items,” Ms Smith said. “Dianne Laird worked hard for her money and she had plans, so $6,000 out of $345,000 is a lot. That’s not what she gave Cedric Oates the money for.”Ms Smith said that Mr Oates had lied to officers during his police interview, telling them that he had set up the bank account used earlier that summer for his entertainment company and he was the only person with access to the account.A forensic accountant had told the court the bank account was opened the day before Ms Laird began to wire Mr Oates money, and was opened in the name of both Mr Oates and his wife.The prosecutor said Mr Oates appeared to be cavalier and nonchalant when talking about the money in the interview, saying: “If he had no intention to defraud it would have mattered to him about her money.“But it didn’t matter because he was using her money for his own purposes.”Making his own closing speech Mr Richardson stressed that there is a difference between someone who makes a promise he is unable to keep, and someone who makes promises he has no intention of keeping.“There is a world of difference between a criminal act and the breach of a contract. Breaching an agreement is not a crime,” Mr Richardson said.In order for Mr Oates to be guilty of fraud, Mr Richardson said that he must have known the statements he made were false when he said them.However, in this case, Mr Richardson said the defendant had done exactly what he said he would.“The only thing that went wrong was that it didn’t work out the way they wanted it to,” Mr Richardson said. “That may be a breach of contract, but that’s not a crime.”Mr Richardson noted that Mr Oates is a US citizen, saying that if he really wanted to simply take Ms Laird’s money he could have simply fled the country rather than sending it to his business partner Michael Hopkins, who the court heard spent the money largely on construction related expenses.“How could it be said that he was misleading her when he said he was going to do x and he actually did x?” Mr Richardson asked.He also dismissed the Crown’s argument that Mr Oates used his psychological training and position of authority to manipulate Ms Laird, saying: “This does not make him capable of breaking someone down like a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay.”