John Hillary McLeod will be able to continue writing songs but for the next little while he will have to do so from jail.
The 57-year-old Saskatoon Aboriginal country musician was sentenced to 20 months in prison this morning for defrauding Chinese immigrant Quan Liu of close to $200,000.
McLeod’s defense had argued for a sentence to be served in the community but Crown prosecutor Robin Ritter says jail time is the only just option.
“I think we need to send a message to the community that this type of fraud, a large scale fraud taking advantage of very vulnerable victims, is treated very seriously by the court,” he says.
Ritter adds what makes McLeod’s crimes against Liu particularly heinous is that she was reasonably new to Canada at the time they met and cannot read or write English.
Court heard Liu first met the country musician in about 2007 when he convinced her to invest in a bogus land scheme.
His song, “Lonely Indian Man,” is currently on the National Aboriginal Music Countdown.