Securities watchdog bans former CFL linebacker Mark Allen Dennis

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The Ontario Securities Commission has permanently banned a former Hamilton Tiger-Cat football player from working as a registrant in the financial industry after the regulator concluded he committed "the worst possible abuses" of the capital markets.

Mark Allen Dennis, a former linebacker who later became a financial adviser, was accused of misappropriating funds from clients and was twice convicted criminally and sentenced to jail terms for fraud.

OSC staff relied on the criminal convictions to argue he should also face regulatory penalties, saying Mr. Dennis has admitted "to a pattern of conduct" for taking money from clients but failing to invest it as promised.

In a ruling released Wednesday, OSC commissioner Timothy Moseley imposed a lifetime ban on Mr. Dennis, prohibiting him from trading securities or being registered to work in the investment industry. He is also banned from working as a director or officer of an investment company or a company that issues securities.

"Taken together, all of the facts … easily qualify Dennis's misconduct as among the worst possible abuses of the capital markets that an individual could commit upon numerous innocent and vulnerable victims," Mr. Moseley said in his decision.

Mr. Dennis was sentenced to 42 months in prison in 2015 for a $5-million fraud in which he misappropriated money from clients. At the time of the sentencing, he was serving a separate two-year sentence imposed in July, 2014, for fraud related to taking $1.7-million from a widowed client.

Mr. Dennis's victims have recovered little of their losses because his companies filed for bankruptcy.

Justice Alan Whitten, who oversaw his 2014 trial, said Mr. Dennis was "a fiscal predator" whose theft was "a horrific breach of that position of trust."

Mr. Dennis played for the Tiger-Cats in the early 1990s, but left the game in 1993 after suffering a knee injury and parlayed his profile into a new career as a financial adviser in Hamilton. He worked as an investment adviser at TD Waterhouse from 2000 to 2008, briefly worked at Richardson Partners and then formed his own group of investment companies, called Dennam Companies, in 2009.

The OSC said his misconduct covered the period he worked at all three companies.