HALIFAX –
A Nova Scotia mass murderer used “illegitimate or dubious means” to amass money and enjoy a lifestyle far beyond his reported $40,000 annual income, an inquest into his 2020 murders has found.
But the investigation said in a document released Tuesday that it found no evidence the gunman was involved in organized crime or was a police informant, despite rumors that emerged after it was revealed he had withdrawn $475,000 in cash from Brink’s office shortly before going on a rampage.
A newly released summary of the evidence – known as a foundation document – examines the schemes used by Gabriel Wortman to enrich himself and his penchant for hiding large sums of cash, including $705,000 found buried under the deck at his Portapeak, N.C. property Carolina.
The lavish spending of the gunman, who killed 22 people in 13 hours on April 18-19, 2020, before being shot dead by police, did not match his “modest reported annual income and other visible sources of income,” the document said. “While there are no definitive answers as to the sources of all his income, there is a clear pattern of abuse.”
The killer’s common-law wife Lisa Banfield told the inquest he “didn’t claim what he actually made” from his prosthetics business, but as far as she knew he had no other source of income.
Banfield worked at the shooter’s Dartmouth prosthetics clinic and routinely accepted payments from patients. She said “many” of them paid in cash. At the end of the day, Banfield said, she would bring the money upstairs to the Wortmans at their residence above the clinic. If patients paid by check, she cashed it and brought the money to him.
Banfield was instructed to ask patients to do denture checks on Wortman instead of his business, Banfield said.
A report by the Financial Accounting Management Group found that between 2012 and 2019, the shooter’s average annual income from Atlantic Denture Clinic, which he owns, was $39,916. Banfield’s annual income for her work at the clinic is $15,288.
During that period, the report found Wortman received an additional $232,900 in his personal accounts and another $96,755 in a joint account he shared with Banfield, though he did not say where the money came from.
A report commissioned by the inquiry found that both Banfield and the shooter spent more than their reported income. For example, Wortman spent about $23,600 on items from the federal government’s GCSurplus and $19,400 through PayPal between December 2017 and May 2020. During that same period, Banfield spent about $56,000 at grocery and clothing stores.
From December 2017 to April 2020, Wortman’s accounts, including one he shares with Banfield, one for his holding company and one for his denture company, had combined deposits of about $865,600 and combined withdrawals of more than $1.16 million.
A March 30, 2020, $475,000 cash withdrawal involving CIBC and Brink’s sparked speculation that the shooter was being paid as a police informant, but an investigation determined Wortman withdrew the money after becoming paranoid , that the COVID-19 pandemic will cause Canadian banks to collapse.
Joe Morgado, senior manager of corporate security at CIBC, told the RCMP that he was initially concerned about Wortman’s cash withdrawal request because withdrawing such a large amount could mean someone is being pressured or victimized of fraud.
But after reviewing email correspondence with CIBC employees and the shooter, Morgado told RCMP he understood Wortman was concerned about “the state of the bank” and noted that “quite a few other customers” were worried that “the banking system is going to collapse ” due to the pandemic.
Morgado noted that it was unusual for someone to ask for such a large sum of money, but he reasoned that Wortman was a “middle-aged professional” who had “gradually accumulated a sum of money” and now wanted it withdrawn. He said the bank processed the withdrawal through Brink’s because it didn’t want to risk having so much money on its premises if something went wrong.
The RCMP denied Wortman ever worked as an informant, and in a separate report on the investigation, investigator Dwayne King concluded that the $475,000 withdrawal was not payment for working as an informant. King said that although confidential informants are paid in cash, police will not require the informant to go to a business with video surveillance and provide identification, as Wortman had to do to get his money from Brink’s.
The document noted rumors of the killer’s involvement in drug trafficking. Wortman and Banfield often traveled to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, and while Banfield told the inquest she was often alone “all day” on vacation, she saw no evidence of drug trafficking or other criminal activity while traveling.
One piece of evidence points to possible involvement in the sale or purchase of large quantities of cannabis. A 2018 Via Rail boarding pass found among Wortman’s belongings had handwritten notes on what appeared to be a price list for cannabis. The reverse side of the Via Rail ticket lists the types of cannabis and shows price notes such as “5lb, $5000.”
Banfield confirmed to the inquest that the notes were in Wortman’s handwriting, but said she had not seen them before. She told investigators she never saw drugs on their property and that Wortman chose to become a dentist because he believed it would be a good way to make “a lot of money.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 19, 2022.
This story was produced with the financial assistance of Meta and the Canadian Press News Fellowship.
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