Article content continued

In one instance, he received a phone call directing him to pay upfront money to collect a big payout at a drug store. Even though DeGroote wasn’t supposed to drive, his Bentley was found wedged in a planter at a Florida mall after he apparently crashed trying to get to the drug store, according to filings made on his behalf.

His nurses said they limit his ability to make spontaneous purchases while watching late-night TV.

He put his plumber in charge of a large real estate company that failed. Hucksters in Panama talked him into making a $1-million donation to an orphanage that appears to be a scam.

Lawyers representing DeGroote in the lengthy and difficult Caribbean casino litigation recently moved to appoint a litigation guardian to act on DeGroote’s behalf because of his decline.

Lawyers for one of the defendant groups sought to cross-examine the proposed guardian and the matter has been adjourned.

Sam Rogers, one of DeGroote’s lawyers at McCarthy Tétrault, declined to comment on the guardianship motion.

The legal dispute at issue started in 2012 when DeGroote filed a lawsuit claiming he is the victim of an almost $112-million fraud. He claims he lent the money to a company controlled by three Toronto-area men — two brothers, Antonio and Francesco Carbone, and Andrew Pajak — to fund gambling enterprises in the Caribbean.

The partnership went horribly awry.

DeGroote seeks $200-million in damages for fraud and breach of trust. The affair came under public scrutiny when the National Post and other media published accounts of the deal that had degenerated into threats, violence, arrests and allegations of Mafia interference.

Security video from inside Dream Casino, the Dominican Republic casino that the business partners operated, show Vito Rizzuto, the Godfather of the Mafia in Montreal, being given a tour of the gaming floor in 2013 by Alex Visser, who DeGroote had previously paid.

Mr. DeGroote has done wonderful things in his life, I don’t think anyone disputes that

Rizzuto died of cancer shortly after. (A lawyer for DeGroote previously told the Post that DeGroote had no association with Rizzuto.)

In 2015, Antonio Carbone, of Woodridge, Ont., one of the defendants in DeGroote’s lawsuits, was arrested in the DR and charged after a firebomb destroyed the car of a lawyer working as an administrator for the troubled casino firm.

Carbone has been held in pretrial detention since.

Last summer, DeGroote’s lawyers retained Dr. Hy Bloom, a forensic psychiatrist, to conduct a capacity assessment. Bloom asked Dr. Angela Carter, a neuropsychologist, to also assess DeGroote.

Carter’s assessment in January concluded that DeGroote’s “cognitive impairments are significant,” and “impinge on his ability to engage in tasks requiring any measure of cognitive focus.”

Bloom’s assessment in March noted DeGroote’s medical history adds to his problems, which include persistent pain as a result of a stroke in 2001; high-dose pain medications; multiple operations, including for metastatic melanoma (skin cancer that has spread to other parts of his body) and deep brain stimulation.