A Quebec woman wants to bring a class action against the Consumer Protection Office (OPC), accusing it of having “tolerated” a scam of more than $ 2.5 million since 2015.
In her request filed on May 19, Nancy Vigneault accused the OPC of having failed in its obligation by not protecting the consumer from the fraudulent practices of the Fédération des inventors du Québec (FDIQ) which have been going on since 2015.
Last January, Christian Varin, the founder of the FDIQ, was convicted of fraud and was still awaiting his sentence on Friday. For years, the fraudster made thousands of Quebec inventors believe that he was going to patent their creation, when he was not. These broken promises cost several million dollars. The non-profit organization even went so far as to claim to be made up of a “team of experts” and to have a fund to help inventors.
Many complaints
In the request for authorization prepared by the firm Langlois Cordeau Avocats, it is indicated that the OPC would have received “more than a hundred complaints” since 2015 concerning the practices of the federation, complaints which have not really been taken seriously, according to the plaintiffs.
“However, it was the duty of the Office, even its obligation, to protect Quebec consumers against any fraudulent practice on the part of merchants doing business on Quebec soil. The simple fact of having agreed to issue an itinerant sales permit to this organization, in the context of multiple denunciations of fraudulent conduct on the part of the federation, is an evocative example of the laxity of the organization and the State in this context,” the law firm said in a statement.
For the cheated inventors, it is obvious that the OPC had to monitor the activities of the FDIQ and investigate the “questionable” practices of the organization.
Because of its “inaction” and its “laxity”, the OPC allowed the federation to defraud more than 1,000 Quebec inventors who would not have turned to the FDIQ if they had been warned beforehand, reproached Ms. Vigneault in the application.
Daniel Paquette, a retired policeman, tried in vain to warn the OPC about the practices of the organization. He also wrote a book “Le tueur de rêves” in which he recounts the extent of the fraud perpetrated by Varin as well as the inaction that allowed him to cheat people for seven years.
Other potential victims of the FDIQ could come forward in the coming weeks, since the number of inventors defrauded by the accused is already estimated at a thousand.
