'I'm trying to find justice for the victims' says former PKI investor
Thursday, November 21, 2013
by DAVE PINK
An Ohio woman said in Kitchener Superior Court Wednesday that she was determined to come to Canada – “no matter what” – to testify against Arlan Galbraith and to seek justice for a long list of American investors who took heavy losses with the financial collapse of Pigeon King International.
Galbraith is charged with defrauding investors in his Pigeon King business of millions of dollars.
“I’m here to follow through with what I started in the United States,” Darlene Thayer testified. “I’m trying to find justice for the victims. I believe it was my duty to come up here and testify.”
Thayer and her husband David grow forage and cash crops on about 500 acres near Milan, Ohio, about halfway between Toledo and Cleveland. They lost about $29,000 when Pigeon King went bankrupt in June 2008.
After the bankruptcy, Thayer said she wanted to connect with others who had invested heavily in pigeons and lost. She got hold of a lengthy list of those investors, most of them in the American Midwest, and started making phone calls.
“I just started calling people. Most of them didn’t know me,” she said. “I was kind of like a lifeline for them. They were pouring out their heart and soul to me. They had loans from banks and they were left with all that debt.
“At first I was overwhelmed. Then I became obsessed with this. They wanted me to help them.”
Thayer organized the U.S. Coalition Against Pigeon King International and Arlan Galbraith. The coalition retained a Canadian lawyer, and pushed U.S. authorities to investigate the Pigeon King collapse, without success. “Nobody wanted anything to do with it,” she said.
But when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Waterloo Regional Police approached her to help with an investigation in Canada, Thayer said she jumped at the opportunity. “I was more than relieved that an investigation was taking place,” she testified.
Galbraith operated Pigeon King from an office in Waterloo from 2001 until its bankruptcy. He would sell breeding pairs of pigeons to investors – most of them farmers with barns suited to keeping the birds – with a promise that he would buy back the offspring at a set price. Initially, Galbraith told investors the pigeons were sporting and racing birds and that the offspring would be sold to enthusiasts and hobbyists. Later, he would tell prospective buyers that he was building up breeding stock to produce and process pigeon meat, or squabs.
Thayer said she became aware of Pigeon King in July 2007 when she saw an ad in a local paper. They had a vacant barn, and were looking for a way to use it, so she started thinking about pigeons. “I did try to research it on the internet. I couldn’t find anything negative about it.”
Thayer signed a contract with Pigeon King Dec. 18, 2007. She handed over a cheque of $19,000 for the birds, and spent another $10,000 to make that barn pigeon ready.
A Pigeon King sales agent had encouraged her to complete the deal before the new year, when the price of the pigeons was to have gone up. But, Thayer said, she was shocked when, just a few months later, the company started giving the pigeons to farmers.
“I was thinking that there were too many birds out there and they were looking for people to feed them,” she recalled. “I thought I was seeing things turning sour then.
“Deep down, I knew back then it was a scam and that it was all going to fall apart.”
Galbraith, who has not hired a lawyer and is representing himself in court, challenged Thayer during his cross examination, suggesting that she and the others were merely victims of bad timing.
“I’m a victim, but I’m not a victim of bankruptcy,” said Thayer. “I got in when the scam was falling part.”
Meanwhile, in other testimony, a building engineer testified that Galbraith’s plan to build a pigeon processing plant in Northern Ontario, near the town of Cochrane, was feasible. Lyle Norrie, who specializes in drawing up plans for meat packing plants, testified that Galbraith paid him a $15,000 retainer in February 2008 to do the preliminary planning for the plant.
Norrie said Galbraith seemed serious about the project.
Norrie said the projected cost of the pigeon processing plant would have been about $6.8 million, a price that would have included the trucks needed to service the plant. And considering the land-use legislation in place in the community, it would have been feasible to build and operate enough pigeon-rearing barns nearby to keep the plant operating.
Galbraith is also facing four charges under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. The trial, now in its third week, could continue another three to five weeks.
Justice G. E. Taylor is presiding. BF