John Edward diagnosed to have dementia claiming that he is mentally ill.
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Saskatchewan’s most-known promoter dies a fugitive
21 Feb 2014
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•CMKM’s Casavant reported dead URBAN CASAVANT, known for the CMKM Diamonds Inc. promotion, has died in Saskatchewan, the company has reported. CMKM’s new chief executive officer, Steve Kirkpatrick, disclosed the death on the company’s website. Nobody at Mr. Casavant’s home in Saskatchewan would speak to Stockwatch about the report (or anything else), but an article posted on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s website Thursday stated that U.S. authorities confirmed he had died. The date of death was Feb. 14, 2014. No cause was listed.
The report of Mr. Casavant’s death comes as he faces criminal charges in the United States for the massive CMKM Diamonds promotion. Federal prosecutors in Las Vegas claim he and others dumped hundreds of billions of unregistered shares of the company, reaping $60-million in profits. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) He and a U.K. citizen, John Edwards, were the scheme’s masterminds, prosecutors said. Although many of his co-defendants were arrested and charged, U.S. authorities considered Mr. Casavant, 57, a fugitive.
His death also comes just months after the death of one of his co-accused, former Las Vegas transfer agent Helen Bagley. Court filings state she died on Nov. 17, 2013, while a patient at a hospital in Clark County, Nevada.
Although Mr. Casavant is known mostly for the CMKM promotion, he was a vendor of properties in Saskatchewan to mining companies for many years. He took up prospecting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, eventually acquiring a large land position in Saskatchewan. He vended pieces of that position into a number of public companies, mostly trading on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. Prior to that he had worked as a prison guard in Prince Albert, Sask., and had once run a U-Haul business in the city.
His biggest mark, however, came from the promotion of Casavant Mining International Inc. (later CMKM). The company was listed on the pink sheets, and had billions of shares outstanding. CMKM drew a massive following, touting the “Casavant diamond brand” and a purported $50-million jade collection, among other things.
During the promotion, Mr. Casavant strayed far from his roots in Saskatchewan, touring with a drag race team CMKM had sponsored. The team, called “CKMXtreme,” sported vehicles with the company’s stock symbol. These included a speed truck and a motorcycle, some of which featured images of a miner and diamonds. Attendees wore shirts with slogans such as “Got CMKX?” Mr. Casavant was frequently present in a tent full of geological maps and other promotional data.
During the racing sponsorships the promotion reached its peak. In all, around 40,000 people bought CMKM shares, prosecutors later claimed. The stock only traded for fractions of a penny, but had an outstanding share total of about 800 billion.
Unfortunately for Mr. Casavant and his associates, the promotion eventually fizzled as questions arose about the number of shares the company had outstanding. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission eventually stepped in, suspending the stock on March 3, 2005. The regulator revoked the company’s registration seven months later. A number of civil and administrative proceedings ensued, culminating with the criminal charges against Mr. Casavant, Mr. Edwards and others in 2010.
With Mr. Casavant’s death, any trial in the CMKM case may not feature either of the scheme’s alleged masterminds. The other CMKM promoter, Mr. Edwards, has been actively fighting extradition from the U.K., claiming that he is mentally ill. In an appeal to the High Court of Justice last summer, his lawyer said Mr. Edwards had been diagnosed as unsuitable for trial. He had gone through a cognitive decline that was most likely caused by dementia, according to an expert. The High Court ultimately declined to block Mr. Edwards’s extradition, but the judges did not close the dementia issue. They said it would be for the courts in the U.S. to determine his fitness for trial.
(Further information regarding CMKM Diamonds and associated companies can be found in 80 Stockwatch articles dated Oct. 21, 2003; June 22; Sept. 16 and 24; Oct. 1, 15 and 20, 2004; Feb. 11, 14, 18, 22 and 23; March 1, 3, 4, 7, 14, 15, 16 and 21; June 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 29 and 30; July 1, 4, 6, 12 and 13; Aug. 2, 5 and 9; Sept. 7, 12, 27 and 30; Oct. 24, 26 and 31; Nov. 7, 11, 22 and 25; Dec. 1, 6, 9, 15 and 22, 2005; Jan. 3; Sept. 29; Oct. 4, 2006; Aug. 30, 2007; and April 7, 9, and 11, 2008; Sept. 21, 2009; Feb. 17 and 23; March 2, 5 and 10, 2010;
