Contractor can retract guilty pleas in fraud case, court rules

A cottage country contractor who pleaded guilty earlier this year to multiple fraud-related charges has been allowed to retract most of those pleas.

Scott Eisemann, 55, is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from more than a dozen Ontario cottage owners for renovation projects that were left unfinished. CBC Toronto was the first to report in 2020 about complaints against Eisemann and his company, Cottage Life Construction, from cottage owners in Parry Sound, Georgian Bay, Orillia and elsewhere in the Muskoka region.

He faced 13 charges in total, with each count relating to a separate individual he allegedly defrauded.

In January, Eisemann pleaded guilty to seven of those charges at the Ontario Court of Justice in Orillia as part of a deal with the Crown that would have seen him serve time in jail.

During that hearing, a detailed statement of facts was read out in court laying out the particulars of how Eisemann allegedly took money from one of the victims but didn't complete the promised work. Court heard that similar statements for the other six victims were expected to be read out at a sentencing hearing a month later.

However, after that hearing, Eisemann petitioned the court to retract his guilty pleas, arguing that on the day of the plea he was suffering from "lack of sleep and significant depression and anxiety" and only skimmed the facts he was agreeing to, Justice Anastasia Nichols said in court Monday.

Nichols said Eisemann also claimed he felt pressured by the lawyer who represented him at that hearing to plead guilty and strike a deal for a lighter sentence.

Judge keeps plea in 1 case

In her judgment read aloud in court Monday, Nichols largely rejected these arguments and declined to strike the guilty plea related to the count for which the facts were read out in court.

"Overall, I found Mr. Eisemann was evasive and argumentative during the course of cross-examination," Nichols said. "I do not accept his evidence that he was in such a state of anxiety and depression that he did not understand the significance of his pleas of guilt that day."

Rene Langevin (far left) and Liz Saunders (middle) are among the alleged victims of Eisemann. (Ryan Patrick Jones/CBC)

In making that decision, Nichols referenced an email Eisemann sent his lawyer days before the January hearing in which he indicated he had "gone over everything from front to back," came to the conclusion that he wouldn't win the case and had decided to plead guilty.

She also brought up the fact that Eisemann had previous experience with the criminal justice system given that he was previously convicted for fraud in 2014 and spent time in prison.

"Mr. Eisemann was well aware of the charge he was facing and pled guilty to," she concluded.

Pleas struck for other counts

Still, Nichols agreed to strike Eisemann's guilty pleas relating to the six counts where the prosecution and defence had yet to agree on an account of what happened.

"Given the facts were not read in on the date in question and there have been no findings, I reluctantly agreed that these should be struck," she said.

The ruling means Eisemann's previous plea agreement is null and void. He will be sentenced at a later date for the one count to which he pleaded guilty, while the other charges still need to be dealt with, which could include pleas, a settlement or a trial.

Eisemann will return to court in two weeks.

Some of the contractor's alleged victims see the decision as win, even if the retracted guilty pleas were for a count relating to their complaint.

"He was found guilty on the one charge ... The other six are still hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles," said Liz Saunders.

"He can either go to trial on those six or plead guilty, but they haven't gone away."

Saunders was among the first to go public in November 2020. At the time, she told CBC Toronto she paid Eisemann $64,000 to raise her Bracebridge, Ont., cottage, build a new foundation and lower it back down.

Instead of completing the job, Eisemann is accused of taking Saunders's money, walking away from the job and leaving the modest cabin perched on wooden blocks, two metres off the ground.

"It's an amazing feeling because we did it. We stuck to it. We went to court. We were there staring at him and it worked," said Saunders.

Rene Langevin, another homeowner whose case CBC Toronto reported on, said it's possible that Eisemann could be sentenced to a jail term longer than the one he would have received under now-obsolete plea deal.

"The downside to that is that we'll probably have to go through the full trial process. So in terms of a timeline, we're probably stretching it out yet again, which is frustrating." Langevin said.

"I really would just wish Scottie would own up to his actions."