Sex Offender Pleads Guilty to Stock Swindle

A Canadian man convicted last year on a sex charge in San Diego has pleaded guilty in Ohio to two counts of securities violations.

Dale Normand, 38, who pleaded guilty in San Diego County in 1989 to a misdemeanor count of having unlawful sex with a minor, faces up to 36 months in an Ohio prison as well as a $5,000 fine for defrauding investors of $300,000, said Tim Quine, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Commerce.

Ohio authorities initially charged Normand with 16 counts of selling unregistered securities through a company called Stellex Partnership Ltd. However, a plea bargain resulted in the dismissal of 14 counts, Quine said.

Normand is expected to be sentenced within 60 days by an Ohio judge, Quine said. After serving his sentence, he is expected to be deported by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Normand used a company called Heritage Securities to sell the phony securities in Ohio and California. Authorities in both states said the company was not registered to sell securities.

Normand came to the attention of San Diego police in 1988 when vice officers received numerous complaints from parents and young women. According to police investigators and court documents, Normand lured several young women to an office in Mission Valley with promises of movie careers and modeling contracts.

The young women, some as young as 16, were promised parts in a movie Normand said he was producing. Authorities said Normand’s promises were a ruse, and two teen-age girls filed complaints with the court that Normand tricked them into having sex with them.

One of the complaints resulted in a plea bargain in which Normand admitted to a misdemeanor count of having sex with a minor. Judge Andrew G. Wagner sentenced Normand to 42 days in custody and ordered him extradited to Ohio to face charges there.

“I’m inclined to think that he’s the biggest con man on the face of the earth,” Wagner said when sentencing him last October. “How he (succeeded in) this fraud is beyond me. I find his behavior incredible and the naivete of the people he surrounded himself with beyond belief.”