The Nova Scotia mass murderer used “illegal or dubious means” to amass cash and enjoy a lifestyle far beyond his reported annual income of $40,000, according to an inquest into his 2020 murders. 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 swirled after it was revealed he withdrew $475,000 in cash from a Brink’s office shortly before his rage. A recently released summary of evidence — known as a seminal document — examines the schemes Gabriel Wortman used to enrich himself and his penchant for hiding large sums of cash, including $705,000 found buried below deck in Portapique, NS, property of. The lavish spending of the gunman, who killed 22 people in 13 hours on April 18-19, 2020 before being shot dead by police, was out of step with his “modest reported annual income and other visible sources of income,” the document said. “While there are no definitive answers about the sources of all of his income, there is a clear pattern of misunderstanding.” The killer’s wife, Lisa Banfield, told the inquest he “didn’t claim what he was actually making” from his dentures business, but as far as she knew he had no other source of income. Banfield worked at the gunman’s dental clinic in Dartmouth and was usually the one accepting payments from patients. He said “many” of them paid in cash. At the end of the day, Banfield said, she would bring the cash to Wortman at their residence above the clinic. If patients paid by check, he cashed them and brought the money to him. Banfield was instructed to have patients do denture checks at Wortman instead of his business, Banfield said. A report by the Financial Accounting Management Group found that between 2012 and 2019 the gunman’s average annual income from Atlantic Denture Clinic, which he owned, was $39,916. Banfield’s reported annual income for her work at the clinic was $15,288. During that time, 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 it does not indicate where the money came from. A report commissioned by the investigation found that both Banfield and the gunman spent beyond their reported incomes. 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 the same time period Banfield spent about $56,000 at grocery and clothing stores. From December 2017 to April 2020, Wortman’s accounts, including one he shared with Banfield, one for his holding company and one for his dentures company, had combined deposits of about $865,600 and combined withdrawals of more than 1, $16 million. A $475,000 cash withdrawal on March 30, 2020 involving CIBC and Brink’s motivated speculation that the gunman was being paid as a police informant, but the investigation found that Wortman withdrew the money after becoming paranoid that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause a collapse of Canadian banks. Joe Morgado, senior director of corporate security at CIBC, told RCMP he was initially concerned about Wortman’s cash withdrawal request because recovering such a large amount could mean someone is being duped or a victim of fraud. But after going through email correspondence with CIBC employees and the gunman, Morgado told RCMP he understood Wortman was concerned about “the state of the bank” and noted that “several other customers” were concerned that “the banking system is is going to collapse” because of the pandemic. Morgado noted that it’s unusual for someone to ask for such a large sum of money, but he thought Wortman was a “middling professional” who had “gradually made a sum of money” and now wanted to withdraw it. He said the bank processed the withdrawal through Brink’s because it didn’t want to run the risk of having so much cash on its premises if something went wrong. The RCMP denied that 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 informant work. King said that while confidential informants are paid in cash, police would not require the informant to go to a business with video surveillance and provide identification, as Wortman had to do to recover his money from Brink’s. The document notes rumors of the killer’s involvement with drug trafficking. Wortman and Banfield traveled frequently 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 dealing or other criminal activity while traveling. A piece of evidence indicates 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 cannabis price list. The back of the Via Rail ticket lists cannabis strains and shows prices like “5 lbs, $5,000.” Banfield confirmed to the inquest that the notes were in Wortman’s handwriting, but said she had never seen them before. She told investigators she never saw drugs on their properties and that Wortman chose to become a dentist because he thought 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 financial assistance from Meta and the Canadian Press News Fellowship.
