Something about that name Casavant...
'Cancer Con' nabbed in Saskatoon
Motel front desk clerk helps cops catch fugitive after recognizing him
By NADIA MOHARIB, SUN MEDIA
The Calgary Sun
The 'Cancer Con' is back behind bars after a quick-thinking motel desk clerk was convinced the friendly guest was actually a fugitive.
Bryan Casavant -- wanted on Canada-wide warrants for breaching parole and defrauding people from Edmonton to Winnipeg -- was caught, thanks to the clerk at the Westgate Motel in Saskatoon, who noticed his picture in a recent memo.
"I thought 'Oh, crap,'" the 58-year-old, who didn't want to be named, said yesterday from the motel.
"I knew it was him."
But the eagle-eyed clerk had to convince her boss, Victor Conley, to call cops.
She also had to get him to believe the man whose picture she saw on a Manitoba hotel association memo -- the man dubbed 'Cancer Con' after bilking seniors and cancer patients out of at least $20,000 by befriending and then betraying them in ATM scams -- was actually at the motel on Tuesday.
"He hummed and he hawed," she said.
"We couldn't call the police on an innocent man."
Conley said it was a "mental toss-up," given he was only 90% sure the guest matched Casavant, 46.
"I didn't really want to phone it in and have it be the wrong guy and then people saying 'Don't stay at the Westgate, they'll do background checks on you,'" he said.
He said he was both shocked and relieved when the hunch he and the desk clerk shared proved right on the money.
But the clerk finds it hard to reconcile the cheerful guest at the 42-room motel in the city's west end to a life-long criminal on the lam.
"He was very friendly, polite and said 'Good morning,' " she said.
The man said he worked for CN and decided, after booking in for one night, to stay another.
"He came down in the morning and said he might stay another night and would be back later in the afternoon to pay."
And he was true to his word, paying $66.50 for an additional night.
Casavant disappeared from a Calgary halfway home in June. He was granted bail parole after serving less than a year of an eight-year sentence for fraud.
Casavant is now in custody at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert.
Edmonton police are in the process of laying charges against him for two recent cases, and charges are likely out of Winnipeg and other western cities as police investigate similar incidents he may have been involved in.
AI
