Article content

After a 50-day trial, it took jurors only a few hours to decide that Weizhen Tang was guilty of fraud.

Tang was defiant throughout his trial, insisting he never intended to defraud his investors and that it was the intervention and cease trade order by the Ontario Securities Commission that created their losses.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or 'Chinese Warren Buffett' found guilty of fraud by Toronto jury Back to video

The regulator has maintained that Mr. Tang — who frequently calls himself the Chinese Warren Buffett — was not following basic money management regulations and paying out existing investors from the cash collected from new investors.

Tang asserted his innocence in ways rarely — if ever — seen before in a Canadian securities fraud trial. He frequently e-mailed the media directly, claiming in broken English that he never knowingly deceived his investors.

That he chose to represent himself in the trial partly guaranteed his conviction as several times he essentially admitted, both in the hearing and in the e-mails, to activities that are considered fraudulent under in Ontario law.

“It is not fair since I did not have a lawyer, people did not understand Chinese culture and business,” Tang said in an e-mailed response to the Financial Post after the verdict.

“The crown attorney has an army of legal team and tax money to convict me to find me scapegoat for the fraudulent system and waste tax money, a system could convict anybody, nobody could face the jury in the financial industry.”