Maxine Jones made about $5,656 a year, according to recent tax returns, but the wife of disgraced financial adviser Earl Jones still managed to pay for three homes, decorator bills, furniture and lavish travel.
Every month, Mr. Jones cut cheques to his wife straight from an account meant to hold investor money in trust. Among many other expenses, she used the money to buy his Montreal Canadiens season tickets, to make mortgage payments on a Mont Tremblant getaway and to cover the couple's $4,100 (U.S.) membership at the Boca Raton Resort and Club in Florida.
Questioned for the first time in bankruptcy proceedings against the defunct Earl Jones Consultant and Administration Corp., Ms. Jones admitted she never asked any questions or worried much about her tax return, as long as the money kept flowing.
Some months, the cheques cut from the "Earl Jones in trust" account were $15,000, other months they went as high as $35,000.
"I didn't really look at the top of the cheques," Ms. Jones said, according to a transcript of her private deposition held earlier this month. "I thought it was from his company … I trusted him to do [right] you know, for his family. I didn't ask any questions."
Mr. Jones, who is accused of theft and fraud for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme worth about $75-million, has been subpoenaed to give his deposition in the case next month.
The Royal Bank, where the Mr. Jones held his trust account, eventually put a stop to his personal use of the account in 2008, according to Neil Stein, a lawyer trying to recover assets on behalf of investors.
Mr. Stein quizzed Ms. Jones on whether she thought it was unusual that she would be getting monthly payments worth tens of thousands from Mr. Jones's company to pay personal expenses, without declaring any of it as income.
He also wondered why she wouldn't question her husband about an offshore bank account Mr. Jones set up with the Bank of Bermuda. Perhaps she didn't want to know, Mr. Stein suggested. "I have a lot of other things on my mind, children that I was concerned about also. As long as I was able to pay certain bills every month, I did. I didn't ask. I thought he was making money."
Mr. Jones's alleged victims were scornful yesterday, dismissing Ms. Jones's claimed ignorance as a multi-million-dollar fantasy.
"It's just unbelievable Maxine was so ignorant," said Ginny Nelles, a former family friend who, along with her family, sunk $1.5-million into Mr. Jones's scheme. "It's difficult to imagine someone so blind to their husband's finances. It seems like the stereotype of a housewife from the fifties."
Ms. Jones, who filed for divorce earlier this fall after 43 years of marriage to Mr. Jones, is suffering from health problems since the investment business collapsed, according to her lawyer, Leonard Kliger.
"To say the least, she's not very stable," Mr. Kliger said.
Les Perreaux