A smooth-talking serial con man who preyed on seniors, pocketing their wallets after gaining their trust, has been handed a five-year jail term.
Donald Robert Quinnell, 52, of Chilliwack, was sentenced May 12 after pleading guilty to 23 counts of fraud in North Vancouver provincial court. Ten of the charges involved bilking seniors in North and West Vancouver. Other seniors were scammed in Vancouver and Port Moody.
Quinnell’s victims ranged in age from their 60s to their 90s.
Typically, Quinnell “would approach elderly people in a public place like a parking lot or in front of their yard or on the sidewalk,” said Crown counsel Adrienne Lee. Other times, he sought out places where he knew elderly people would be, like seniors homes or seniors centres.
“He would gain the trust of the elderly people by means of a ruse,” said Lee, often claiming “his aunt or his mom is their neighbour, or he lived down the street from them.”
Often, Quinnell would claim to need help, saying “he’d locked his keys in his car ... and he needed to borrow their phone to call for assistance” or that “he needed a ride home to his house,” said Lee.
“Other times he’d say he was a repair person for the building” and that he was at the apartment to fix something, she said.
Once in the senior’s vehicle or inside their home, Quinnell would quickly pocket their wallet. When he left, he’d use their credit cards almost immediately at a nearby grocery store, liquor store or convenience store, she said.
In one case, Quinnell approached an 88-year-old man in a drugstore and told him his father was a doctor and he could get his prescription medications for much cheaper than the senior would pay at the drugstore, before asking to borrow $300 for a friend of his mother’s. Quinnell then took $50 ostensibly to get the man’s prescriptions and never returned.
He told one woman he approached while she was gardening he was raising money for a farm that provides fruit to battered women’s shelters, Lee said.
Quinnell bilked one 95-year-old West Vancouver woman after approaching her in the corridor of her apartment building, claiming to be visiting his grandmother, and stealing her wallet from a bag hanging on the back of her wheelchair.
In another case, said Lee, Quinnell helped set up tables at the West Vancouver Seniors' Activity Centre to give himself an air of legitimacy before asking a woman who was leaving the centre with her friends for a ride home, during which he stole her wallet.
In several cases, the con man claimed that he had locked himself out of his home and had ice cream inside that was melting and needed to use the phone to call his wife. In one case “he said the ice cream was for Children’s Hospital,” said Lee. His 77-year-old victim later told police “she felt like an idiot” for letting Quinnell into her home, said Lee.
When another North Vancouver woman became concerned that her purse was missing while Quinnell was still in her apartment, Quinnell offered to help her call her bank to cancel her cards, gaining her PIN number in the process.
Lee said the predatory way Quinnell targeted elderly people was an aggravating factor in his crimes. “He used his charm on a near daily basis to manipulate, exploit and take advantage of a vulnerable population,” she said.
Quinnell has an extensive criminal record dating back to 1989, said Lee, which includes 111 convictions for similar crimes including fraud, theft and impersonation.
At the time he went on his most recent crime spree, between July and September of 2019, Quinnell was out on statutory release from jail, after being handed a four-year sentence for similar offences in Chilliwack in 2015.
Quinnell had spent the three months of his crime spree hanging out on the Downtown Eastside doing drugs, using alcohol and gambling, said Lee.
Quinnell's jail term would have been five and a half years, but the judge gave him credit for the time spent in custody since his arrest in September.
Quinnell told the judge he was guilty as described. “I apologize to the court,” he said. “I will continue to work hard to be a better person.”
