‘Emerald’ owner arrested for fraud

Regan Reaney (Capture from YouTube)

Update (7:45 p.m., Janury 28). . . The auction went ahead but not a single person was interested.

Western Star Auctions went ahead with an auction January 28 for the dubious ‘emerald’ owned, at least in part, by Regan Reaney.

Bidding started at $500,000 and, according to other media reports, not a single bid was cast.

by Dave Preston

The man who claims to own an emerald purported to be 57,500 carats in size and worth millions of dollars was arrested in Kelowna today for outstanding fraud charges from Ontario.

Regan Blair Reaney was arrested on outstanding warrants on Friday, according to Kelowna RCMP.

“Reany is accused of multiple fraud offences and has outstanding warrants for his arrest out of Hamilton, Ontario,” said an RCMP press release.

The Kelowna RCMP became aware of his warrants through interaction with Reaney and made the arrest once Ontario agreed to return him to their jurisdiction.

Reaney is known to police in Ontario, but is new to Kelowna and had no other dealings with the RCMP here.

Reaney purportedly purchased the ‘emerald’ from an Indian seller and had it authenticated in Calgary. It is set to go on auction Saturday at 1 p.m., with an opening bid of $500,000.

Numerous media outlets, including PeachlandNews.com, reported this past week that several experts questioned the authenticity of the emerald.

See the previous PeachlandNews.com story here.

The RCMP press release does not go into details about the fraud charges Reaney is facing in Ontario.