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Part 8 of the story of the Winnipeg con man: He promises to help an old childhood friend set up a Real Estate Investment Trust
By BERNIE BELLAN This is the eighth part of a story about a delusional Winnipegger who believes he is someone of great wealth and has spent the better part of 30 years contacting people all over the world telling them that he wants to invest in their businesses or projects. The first seven parts of this story are all available to read under the FEATURES category on this website.
Here is part 8 of my story:
To this point, while I’ve given accounts of different individuals who may have spent a great deal of time working on projects that Devlin had promised he would back financially and, while I don’t want to diminish the value of the time they all lost involving themselves in what turned out to be Devlin’s total delusion, none of them could say that they actually lost money as a result of having become involved with Devlin.
Sure, Rick spent what he says were hundreds of hours planning the expansion of his publication – based on Devlin having told him he would back him, and Dan Winthrop spent what he says were years trying to bring his aviation idea to fruition. In neither case though can they say that they put up real money to advance their ideas. Bob Anderson says he was only paid $1,000 for all the work he ended up doing for Devlin, but he admits that he has only himself to blame for having spent so much time without being compensated.
Avi did end up spending time on the phone with Devlin but again, he can’t make much of a case that it cost him financially.
Such was not the case with Jonathan Soloway. In fact, Jonathan was one of the last people to whom I spoke directly who had been a victim of Fred Devlin and that was only after Rick had cajoled him into believing that I was honestly interested in helping him – by exposing Devlin as a total fraud. I’ve already noted that Jonathan’s particular case was so well documented by him having kept copies of every email and every document that Devlin had ever sent him that I told Jonathan I thought he had a really solid case in a civil action if he were to file one – not only against Devlin, but Devlin’s wife and Devlin s parents as well.
He told me that he couldn’t possibly afford a lawyer to represent him, so I said to him that I might be able to help him with that. I told him that I knew a number of very good lawyers in Winnipeg who are experienced civil litigators and that, if he wanted, I would reach out to one or more of them to see whether they might be interested in representing Jonathan in a lawsuit against Fred.
I emailed one lawyer whom I regard quite highly and gave him a brief summary of the case that I thought Jonathan could have against Fred. That lawyer responded the same day, saying that he was currently on vacation, but that he would get back to me when he returned to work.
It was a while before I heard from that lawyer so, in the meantime I thought I would contact some other lawyers whom I thought would also be well suited to handle a lawsuit for Jonathan against Fred. One lawyer with whom I had a very amiable conversation said he couldn’t possibly take on the case because he knew the Devlin family too well. Another lawyer said he was in the process of retiring from practice and regardless, cases of this sort are so complex that it was far outside of his field of practice.
Eventually though, I heard back from the first lawyer I had contacted. He said that he had turned the matter over to the head of civil litigation in his firm and that I could expect to hear from him.
Normally, a lawyer would not discuss a matter of this sort with anyone except his or her client, but there was an extenuating circumstance in this case: I had agreed to put up a retainer for the firm if they agreed there was a solid case to be had against Fred Devlin.
When I was first writing this part of the story I didn’t know what the status of Jonathan Soloway’s putative lawsuit was. I had heard back a few times from the lawyer I had first contacted to ask whether his firm might be interested in mounting a lawsuit on behalf of Jonathan, but each time the answer was that he would have to put it to the firm as a whole to decide whether it would be worthwhile to take on the case. I had explained to the lawyer I had contacted that, if the firm thought it was a bona fide case, I was prepared to put up the retainer that is normal for a law firm to require before proceeding with a case of this sort. My thinking was that, if the firm did file a law suit and it proved successful, then I would get a percentage of the resulting award.
Jonathan had sent a detailed package of documents to the lawyer I had contacted which gave an itemized accounting of how he had been defrauded by Fred Devlin.
Here is what he had sent, on February 28, 2026:
Please find attached a PDF detailing the full employment timeline and the hours I invested in my executive role in connection with ….and the …. Group matter.
This document sets out:
• A chronological summary of my work contributions
• The estimated total hours invested at a senior executive level
• REIT structuring, financial modelling, compensation framework development, and strategic planning
• Representations made to me regarding compensation and ownership interests
• Written communications and text messages wherein Mr. … represented that …. Group would assume responsibility for my outstanding debts and that I was to refrain from paying them personally
• Statements made to me indicating that an executive in my position could not be in bankruptcy
In addition to the attached summary PDF, I am in possession of:
• Signed agreements relating to compensation and ownership
• Supporting PDF documentation
• Screenshots of text message exchanges
• Compensation modelling documentation
• Materials reflecting equity and ownership representations
Please advise how you would prefer the full evidentiary package organized and delivered for review. I am prepared to provide a consolidated, indexed digital binder or hard-copy materials as required.=
I look forward to your guidance regarding next steps.
Jonathan did hear back from the head of the law firm around the middle of March (and I was cc’d on that email). In it he was told that the matter was now in the hands of the head of litigation for the firm.
On April 1, 2026, Jonathan received the following email from the head of litigation:
It was a pleasure speaking with you today regarding your matter.
As a preliminary matter, I addressed the suggestion that this matter might form the basis of a broader claim involving multiple affected individuals. Based on the information currently available, there is no evidentiary foundation to support such an approach. Your circumstances appear to be more consistent with an individual claim arising from alleged breach of contract and misrepresentation. A broader proceeding would require evidence from multiple individuals demonstrating a pattern of conduct involving financial loss, which is not presently before me.
As for your case, I have conducted a preliminary review of the documents you provided. Below is my understanding of the facts and our discussion. Please let me know if I have misunderstood or omitted anything:
Sometime around August 2024, you entered into discussions with Mr. … and what you describe as the “…Group of Companies Worldwide Holdings Group.” Based on representations made to you, you travelled to Winnipeg for meetings, participated in discussions regarding the development of a REIT, and entered into an employment agreement.
Under the employment agreement (Note: the full employment agreement can be found beginning on page 68.) you were to receive compensation of $250,000 annually commencing June 1, 2025, as well as additional compensation on termination. You also advised that the agreement contemplated you holding a 49.5% interest in a proposed company.
You then engaged in executive-level planning and related work in reliance on those representations. You estimate that you spent approximately 1,850 hours performing work in preparation for the establishment of the REIT.
You now believe that those representations were false. You have not received any compensation for your work, including salary or other payments.
As discussed, the role of counsel at this stage is twofold. First, to determine whether you have a viable legal claim, including identifying the appropriate causes of action. Second, to assess the nature and quantum of damages that may be recoverable. To complete that assessment, it will be necessary to review the employment agreement and all supporting documentation, including evidence of the representations made to you, your reliance on those representations, and the losses you have sustained. Depending on the terms of the agreement and available evidence, your claim may proceed either in contract or tort (e.g. negligent misrepresentation, detrimental reliance, quantum meruit, and other causes of action). I suspect you do have one or more actionable causes of action. Damages are less clear. Enforcement even more tenuous.
Based on the information currently available, there is some uncertainty as to whether Mr. … has sufficient assets to satisfy any judgment. You indicated that there may be a possibility of recovery through discussions with his family in the event of a successful claim. However, that outcome is uncertain and should be considered when evaluating the cost-benefit of litigation.
As a next step, I recommend that you retain our firm to conduct this initial analysis and assessment. Subject to clearing conflicts, this would require execution of our engagement documentation and payment of an initial retainer of $5,000. You indicated that Bernie, associated with the Jewish Post and News, may be prepared to fund your legal fees and asked that I contact him to confirm. I will do so. For clarity, you have authorized me to discuss your matter and our conversation with Bernie. I have copied Bernie on this report.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of this further, I remain available.
(I should note that the reference to my association with The Jewish Post and News was wrong. The Jewish Post & News no longer exists but hey, lawyers can make mistakes.)
Jonathan didn’t send me all the documents he had sent to the lawyer whom I had first contacted, but he did send me the “Master Employment Agreement,” which Devlin signed, and which spells out in great detail everything that Fred Devlin was promising to Jonathan Soloway.
In terms of chronology, Jonathan’s experience with Devlin was quite recent – going back only a little more than a year. When I talked to Jonathan I began by reviewing what I had already learned about Devlin. I wanted Jonathan to be aware that I knew quite a bit about Devlin, but I was quite interested in speaking to someone who had actually lost money as a result of Devlin having ensnared him in his delusion, not just someone who had only spent time working on a plan that was delusional.
I said to Jonathan that Devlin has left “no prints’ on the internet. A search for his name or the Xanadu Group of Companies would turn up nothing because, as I explained to Jonathan, what I had found out was that nothing Devlin had boasted as having done or as owning when he spoke with so many other individuals was “real.”
Since writing this, however, I’ve now become aware that someone was able to retrieve the original article I had written about the person I’ve been calling Fred Devlin and has reposted that article under a different website. The person who reposted that article used something called the “Wayback Machine.” Don’t ask me what that is. All that I know is an article I had first posted on February 22, 2026, then removed two days later, is back on the internet.
To return to my conversation with Jonathan Soloway – I went on: “It didn’t take me too long to realize this guy is nuts, and that’s why I left it alone after I talked to his mother” – until I received that January 16 email.
“But,” I continued, “now that I realize that he’s a very dangerous nut, it’s a different story. “What I’d like to know is whether his parents have been involved with this? Because it’s one thing if his mother or if both his parents are paying for Fred and his wife’s car or house, whatever it is, but do they realize that, according to what I’ve been told by more than one person, their son likes to go to the Fairmont Hotel for breakfast – carrying a briefcase, and that he sort of holds court there – pretending to be a very important businessman?”
Jonathan concurred: “He walks in there like a big ‘macher’ (a Yiddish expression for someone important), like everybody knows him there. He sits down for breakfast there. But the thing I really, I find so incredible is, his wife, she has to be completely complicit here because what else does he do during the day?”
I said that’s something I’d like to find out too, adding that I had been told his wife has been present at many of Fred’s so-called “business meetings.” What has her role been in enabling Fred to carry on with his delusional behaviour, I wondered?
Jonathan said: “He thinks he’s… some sort of like, how do I say? He thinks he’s some sort of divine intervention from God that he will help you. That’s how he comes across. And he’s put on this planet to help people.
“…so if you’re someone who is destitute and you’ve got problems, then you’re someone he loves to help.
“And how he finds these people in itself is a question. I guess, being on social media and seeing who are friends of friends and maybe tapping into them.”
I said to Jonathan “I’m not going to try and find every last person that Fred Devlin has contacted because the stories are all of a pattern. He finds someone – I guess mostly through social media, finds out something about them, tells them he’d like to help them – and pretty soon he has them believing he’s some fabulously rich businessman who will help them financially.”
Jonathan then asked me about my own background: “So are you the Western Jewish News?” (That was another Jewish newspaper that my late brother and I, along with another partner, bought in 1987 – mostly to get rid of it to eliminate the competition for the paper we owned, which was The Jewish Post.)
“No,” I explained to Jonathan,”I used to be the owner of the Jewish Post & News – which used to be called the Jewish Post.”
I added that my brother, who had been the editor of the paper, died suddenly in 2009, and I took over as editor and publisher until I gave the paper away in 2024 to a non-profit Jewish service organization called the Gwen Secter Centre. I told Jonathan that I still work with the print newspaper somewhat, but I focus my attention more on my website, which is called jewishpostandnews.ca.
Jonathan said that he hadn’t paid much attention to Winnipeg’s Jewish community since he left Winnipeg in the 1990s, but he knew that his mother was a subscriber to the Jewish newspaper. I told him that I knew her name.
I also told Jonathan that I had done investigative journalism in my time, but I had never come across as crazy a story as the Fred Devlin story. I said that I knew Fred suffers from a delusional psychosis and that I wanted to do whatever I could to stop him from harming more people. That’s why, I said to Jonathan, I wanted to learn a lot more about what had happened between Fred and him because, after talking to Rick, I thought that Jonathan had the most convincing case that could lead to a successful lawsuit against Fred and his family.
Jonathan said “the one thing they’ve got to do with Fred is take away his phone – or just take him away, period. I think they got to put him in a straitjacket.”
I said, “that doesn’t happen – unfortunately, but I’m going to try and keep other people from being victimized by him.” And that’s why I wanted to help Jonathan find a lawyer who would file a lawsuit for Jonathan.
“If you can sue Fred then I can report on any of the allegations the lawyer would include in your lawsuit,” I said to him. And my simply reporting those allegations would prevent another lawyer from suing me for defamation, I added – something that I had been threatened with when I first posted something to my website about Fred – and his family.
That’s why I wanted to learn as many of the details of what had gone down between Jonathan and Fred, I explained.
I added: “And if it causes his parents great embarrassment, so be it. They should have put a stop to this years ago. And they didn’t.”
Jonathan said: “I think at the beginning, if I understand it correctly, he (Fred) did very well in business financially. But then, he lost a lot of money… it was some investor he had.
“And then, I think that’s when his parents stepped in and started to help him. All I know is he was involved with (name of business omitted). That’s all I know.”
I wanted to turn the conversation to finding out what exactly was the nature of the business deal Jonathan and Fred were supposed to have had. I had been told by Rick that it had something to do with real estate, so I asked Jonathan if his background was in real estate?
I don’t want to describe in specific terms what Jonathan’s business background was because anyone reading this who might have known him would know exactly who it is who I’m writing about and, just as I had promised everyone else whom I interviewed, I wanted to give them anonymity.
Suffice to say that Jonathan had held an extremely important position within the construction industry in Toronto for over 25 years. “At one point in my life, I was travelling about 200,000 miles a year,” he noted.
He continued, “So I travelled all over the world for almost 11 years. And I was invited by the federal government to be part of the Team Canada trade mission to China and Hong Kong.
“I left my job after 25 years. And I didn’t really know what to do. So I became a consultant. I was … group consultants for a while. And I did a couple of jobs here and there. And it was never really paying the bills properly, whatever it was.
“And I decided then to go get my real estate license because real estate here was extremely huge. It was a crazy real estate market we had here for about 18 years. And by the time I got my real estate license, that’s when everything turned.
“I went into real estate at the very worst time. I mean, the past two years, I’ve hardly made any money. I’ve been extremely struggling for that matter.
“And that’s where I stand today.”
But when did his involvement with Fred Devlin start, I wondered?
Jonathan explained: We went to school together as kids, like five, six, whatever it is. I mean, I knew him… I mean – Jewish geography when Winnipeg was small. Everybody knew everybody. I mean, I grew up with the YMHA… where almost all Jewish kids went… I knew his parents, too. I mean, I spent some time at their house. I was a childhood friend of his, but… I kind of fell out of his life for about 40 years. He reached out to me one day on Facebook out of nowhere, and we rekindled the friendship that we had missed for well over 35 years.”
I asked Jonathan: “Do you remember when that was, how long ago it was?”
He answered: I don’t remember exactly, but I’m going to say it was sometime around a year ago. I’m trying to think here…It would have been like February of last year – but wait, I might be wrong. It might have been the year before.”
I said: “But, whenever it was, it’s been quite recently.”
Jonathan: “Right. I was in Winnipeg in September of 2024. So I came back to Winnipeg to see Fred and I stayed with my mother. I was there for three days. That was the first meeting I had with Fred it, was September of 2024. So I would have met him on Facebook several months before that, in 2024.”
I said: “Okay, so just tell me what happened then.’
Before he launched into his story of what happened between him and Fred, Jonathan said he had to tell something about himself. Again – to keep his identity hidden I won’t divulge the detail of what happened, but suffice to say, he lost quite a bit of money in a failed investment. Some things happened in his personal life – aside from losing quite a bit of money in an investment, but I won’t describe that either.
In short, Jonathan’s life was falling apart. He “didn’t have a car,” he was living at his brother’s and, as he had noted earlier, the real estate business in Toronto had gone bad.
And then Fred showed up in his life. ‘When I met Fred, you know, he was like ‘the saviour. Like he’s done with everybody, he told me, he was going to help me.
“And he knew I came from the construction industry, and he wanted to set up a real estate REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) with all his properties that he had in Winnipeg, in Cleveland, and in Toronto, and I thought that this was a great idea. He told me all about Xanadu, and about his airplanes…, that he owns Air Canada, that he owns the World Bank, that he owns, like, all this pie-in-the-sky stuff, whatever it was. It was just crazy.
“And… I believed him, mostly because he was a childhood friend of mine and I knew him. I had no reason for him to be telling me a lie, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
“Now, it didn’t cost me any money to hear his other stories, and even though I knew the other stories weren’t true, the way he put together this idea for a REIT – well, he knew all the ins and outs and he was very convincing… and we talked about putting this together, and blah, blah, blah…
“But, first and foremost, one of the things that was very strange is that every time things were going to get together, it just never got together. Like, Fred always had some sort of something, saying: ‘Jonathan, I can’t do that this week, because I’m going to Israel tomorrow, or I can’t, you know – or I’ve got to go to the hospital, or whatever that might be, he had an excuse for everything. It doesn’t matter,
“There was always a reason that it wasn’t going to happen. So fast forward to 2025 – we made a plan that I would come into town (Winnipeg) in May of 2025, and that by the time I left, that we would have a contract put in place, because the intention was, he said for sure that we’re going to put this together, and we’ll have this together on the first of September…Originally,” he said, “he wanted to try to raise capital for all this, with all the people that he knew.
“And then he decided at the very last minute, that he’ll use his own properties, which was what I always thought was going to happen, because when you’re setting up a REIT, you need these properties, but these properties, he already had. There was no reason to go search for other investors to begin with. Long and short story is, one of the first real problems I had with Fred was, we finally did a contract, and I had a legal contract written up, and it was signed on the 31st of May,” but Fred never fulfilled any of the terms of the contract.
“When I was in Winnipeg, he had mentioned to me, like, Jonathan, you know, look, there’s no reason for you to try to get a part-time job right through the summer, whatever it is, you know, I’ll make sure that you’re looked after financially, and I’ll get you paid, and whatever… And, you know, he promised me all these things, but when I got home, sure enough, he wasn’t paying me. He wasn’t going to pay me anything, and he said that he thought I had money in my bank account, but I didn’t have enough.
“He made all these excuses, saying ‘I can’t pay you right now.’ Then, every discussion I had with Fred was really very thorough. The discussions would last, like, an hour on the phone.
“You know, he was, how do I say… what’s the word I’m trying to say, I guess, if I could say it the best way, he was very grandiose…In many ways he always had an incredible story to tell you – and one that sounded really real. But, around the end of September, around Rosh Hashanah, Fred tells me that he hurt his head, and he’s got to go to the hospital, and while he’s in the hospital, he tells me that what he’s going to do is ‘If I can survive until the 3rd of January of 2026, then everything’s going to be refunded, you’re going to have all this money, because you’re an owner in this company, and blah, blah, blah.
“And I said, ‘Well, Fred, I have all this debt. I’ve got to service this debt. I don’t have a way to wait until January, otherwise I’ve got to get a job or do whatever it is. So, from the hospital, I get an email from him, I mean, a text from him, that he’s going to have Xanadu Group take over my debt, and that I’m never going to have to worry about my debt anymore. And he sent me several text messages about this, saying give me all your debt right now, and let me see what I can do. He was going to take this one thing off my back, and the company was going to look after it, and that would be that.
“And that was the best thing I’d ever heard. And fast forward until the end of October, like two months later, now I’m told that the company told him he can’t pay off my debt, but he’ll help me negotiate some sort of deal with my vendors, he’ll get on the phone with them if I have to as well, for me as well, too. So, we made a couple of calls to one or two of my creditors, he was on the phone and talked like he was like some sort of lawyer or whatever it is, but then I realized right then and there that, you know, all these kind of promises that Fred had promised to save me and to look after me, it just never worked.
“It was just a lie, the whole thing – all the promises, the contracts – they were all crap.. And I’ll say something about Rick now. Several months before I got so deeply involved with Fred, Rick reached out to me on Facebook.
“I didn’t know who he was and he just said to me, ‘I see you’re a mutual friend of Fred Devlin’s and Fred’s going to be doing some work with me as well too in California, and I have this magazine and so on.
“I never paid much attention to what Rick wrote. I just said, ‘Well that’s nice, that’s great, ‘and I even said to Fred, ‘I met a friend of yours, Rick, and I didn’t know anything about this. Fred didn’t say anything. All he said was ‘Yeah, I’m going to be doing some stuff with him,’ but what I didn’t know is that how Fred got extremely angry at Rick, that he had told told me he was going to do something with Fred.
“I didn’t realize until afterward that Fred didn’t like that I was talking to someone else he was supposedly doing a deal with.’ “(Now I understood better why Bob Anderson kept sending nondisclosure agreements to different individuals. It makes one wonder though, even though Fred was clearly delusional, somewhere in the back of his twisted mind he knew what he was doing was all one great big con. Does he wander in and out of reality, I wonder – and starts to remember the crazy things he’s told different people? Who knows?
I never had the opportunity to speak to any of the psychiatrists who must have treated him over the years. My hope is that someday, someone close to Fred is going to tell the truth about his psychosis – and why those close to him allowed him to carry on his delusional behaviour for so many years. Even as I write this, I keep receiving messages from different individuals saying Fred just contacted them recently – and threatened them if they didn’t continue to fulfill their arrangements.)
Jonathan continued: “When this all happened I got a call from Rick around the exact same time where the lid was being pulled off on all this, and that’s when I really realized that I’d gone down this rabbit hole, I’d taken three flights I’d taken to Winnipeg, and I think back at some of the things that we went through, like you know – Fred wanted to come to Toronto, but he stayed with me – at my brother’s house with me. I thought if you’re a billionaire, what the hell would you want to stay in my house when you could stay in an expensive hotel – like everything just never added up, that he never had any money.”
Jonathan went on to say that he’s a big history buff and when Fred learned that about him, he told him that he wanted Jonathan to write a story about the history of the Middle East. (Devlin’s thought processes were so confusing for me to try and follow. Each time I looked back over the transcript of a conversation I had with someone who had some sort of connection to Fred Devlin I would see crazy twists in what Devlin would talk about. Devlin’s focus would easily turn to something else totally unrelated to where a conversation first started between him and a prospective business partner.)
I asked Jonathan whether Devlin had ever mentioned someone by the name of David Simkin? You may recall that when I, myself, first met Paul Devlin, he handed me a business card for his supposed group of companies with the name David Simkin given as the CEO on the card. I still haven’t been able to establish whether there was an actual individual by the name of David Simkin – although I suppose it’s a fairly common Jewish name but, as I mentioned at the outset of this story, if there ever was anyone named David Simkin who had some sort of connection to Fred Devlin, I’ve never been able to get in touch with him.
Jonathan said that Devlin had mentioned the name “David Simkin” to him many times, adding that he, too, had been told Simkin lived in Luxembourg, where he was CEO of the Xanadu Group of Companies. Devlin told Jonathan that Simkin had come back to Winnipeg and Devlin was trying to find a place “for him to live in.” (Strange, isn’t it? Devlin has to stay with Jonathan in Jonathan brother’s house when he comes to Toronto and the CEO of a worldwide group of companies headquartered in Luxembourg has come back to Winnipeg – and he doesn’t have a place where to live.)
I told Jonathan that David Simkin was all part of Devlin’s incredibly detailed delusion. I noted that, while his entire story was crazy, at least he was consistent in describing to different people how his group of companies was so vast, that it was headquartered in Luxembourg, and that its CEO was someone by the name of David Simkin. Where he deviated from his basic story, Rick told me, was in relating to people how many companies were in the Xanadu group of companies and how much wealth Devlin had. According to Rick, the number of companies Devlin told him were part of the Xanadu group was over 3,300 – not 300, and Devlin wasn’t just a billionaire, he was a trillionaire!
Now, while you may be giving your head a shake at the absurdity of all this, there were many times when Devlin would keep his none-stretchers in check. I only talked to a few of the individuals who were conned by him – and those were all individuals who were willing to admit they had been so badly deceived by Devlin. But there were many others, I was told, who had taken meetings with Devlin – and the names I was given were of very respected businesspeople, who didn’t dismiss Devlin as some sort of nutcase.
That tells me that, despite his psychosis, he had some awareness that he had to tailor whatever story he was telling someone to that particular individual. The fact that he did obtain an MBA and did have a successful business career – at least, according to that story in the Manitoba business magazine and the subsequent mention of him in another business publication would certainly lead one to understand that, even in his fantasy that he was a brilliantly successful businessman, some vestiges of his past business experience would allow him to mount a very sophisticated facade when the occasion required it.
That goes to explain the level of complexity of the deal that Jonathan agreed to enter into with Fred.
I asked Jonathan how it was that Fred contacted him? Jonathan had said that he hadn’t had any contact with Fred since grade school – which was over 40 years previous. I wondered whether Fred had found him on Facebook, for instance?
“Did he find you on Facebook?” I asked. “Was that it?”
Jonathan answered: “I believe so. I don’t remember exactly. I’m not a big social media person, so he probably did find me on Facebook.”
I explained why I had asked that question: “Well, the reason I ask is I’m so curious about how he networks with people. He seems really adept at getting in touch with people who have some substance to them, and he sort of relies on name-dropping to cement his reputation.”
I noted that “one of the people I spoke to had actually gone to the trouble of setting up a meeting between Fred and (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu.”
I asked Jonathan whether he had hear that story himself?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jonathan responded. “When I heard that, I said, ‘that’s incredible.’ “
I said to Jonathan: “But, of course, it was all delusion.” I went on to say that Avi (who was the fellow who had arranged that meeting acknowledged that it was “a good thing Fred. didn’t show up.” Otherwise, Avi would have been deeply embarrassed at Bart having met with Netanyahu.
But then Jonathan added a new story that, to that point, I hadn’t heard: “The other thing is, so Fred, apparently out of his own money, was working with a guy named Ari Deron, who was the former head of the Mossad in Israel.”
I said: “What? The former head of the what? The Mossad?”
Jonathan said: “Fred said he was the former head of cyber security for the Mossad.”
(I did a Google search to see whether there was ever anyone prominent in the Mossad by the name of Ari Doron. Here’s what I came up with : “Based on available records, there is no evidence of a high-profile former Mossad member named Ari Doron. The name appears to be primarily associated with a fictional character, Lt. Ari Doron, in the 2001 novel Martyrs’ Crossing by Amy Wilentz, who is an Israeli soldier, not a Mossad operative.”
I explained to Jonathan that I had spoken to someone by the name of Avi – who was the person who was going to set up the meeting between Fred and Netanyahu, but Avi never mentioned anything about a Mossad connection. It did occur to me, after hearing what Jonathan mentioned about the Mossad that, during one of my phone conversations with Rick, he had told me that Fred had told him that he was always accompanied by 20 bodyguards from the Mossad. Maybe I should have included that earlier in this story.
I asked Jonathan whether, when all was said and done, the REIT plan that Fred had contracted with Jonathan to establish, had cost Jonathan a lot of money?
His answer was: “No, I didn’t lose a lot of money with Fred. I lost a lot of time with Fred.”
I said: “You lost a lot of time. That’s the story with everyone. People wasted their time.”
Jonathan continued: “Immense amounts of time. Immense amounts of time. I mean, the quantified dollars, I mean, three flights to Winnipeg.
“As I said, I stayed with my mother. You know, a couple of drinks that we went out to that I paid, you know, that he didn’t. I didn’t lose hundreds of thousands of dollars with him, but I lost an immense amount of time here.
“And the contract that he wrote with me, he was going to pay me $250,000 a year. And if he didn’t exercise the contract in a certain amount of time over the two years, he’d have to pay me $1.5 million. Yeah.
“And this is what we wrote in the contract. And again, like I’ve had some employment lawyers here who told me that the contract’s pretty solid, but it means shit if he has no money.”
“What I do believe, and again, this is just my thought here is that his parents, his mother in particular, are aiding and abetting him here. She did agree that they paid for his house and she said, it’s a lower class house in Winnipeg.
“And one thing I’ve never understood is, Fred’s wife – where is she in this equation? People say that she’s complicit in what Fred has been doing…and I would have to think she is. The one thing I knew about Fred is he is completely inept when it comes to technology.
“Like, he didn’t know how to print anything, how to write anything, how to sign anything. Like it was just – very strange. I used to say ‘Fred, why don’t you even have an assistant that would do all these things? Like, when I had to sign the contract, I have to send it to his wife as a PDF document have her print it off, have him sign it and have her scan it back to me because he didn’t know how to do any of those things… the simplest things, but he didn’t know any of that.
“Yeah. It was very, very strange. He didn’t know anything to do with technology whatsoever.
“What really fascinates me about it all is what you said about his being totally delusional. When I think of Fred I think that he is living some sort of a life that he doesn’t even know he’s living in.”
But, as both Jonathan and I learned – to out chagrin, after having heard from the head of litigation of the law firm that had looked at Jonathan’s case, there was no point in suing someone who had no apparent assets – no matter how much it was evident that he was being supported by his parents – who have substantial assets.
As for the criminal investigation to which I referred in an earlier chapter, Jonathan hasn’t heard back from any police authority – neither the Winnipeg Police Service, nor the RCMP, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that there is no interest on the part of any police service in pursuing a fraud investigation of Fred Devlin.
At a certain point, however, I was no longer simply writing about events – I was now an active participant in trying to bring some sort of justice for everyone who had been a victim of Fred Devlin’s delusions. I suppose some might consider the degree to which I’ve involved myself in a story that began with an email somewhat surprising, but it was when I began communicating with the person whose story will be told next that I was moved to go beyond simply writing about what Fred Devlin had done. I actually sent a fair bit of money to help one victim of Devlin’s elaborate con who, I was quite afraid, was on the verge of committing suicide.
Coming next: Charlie’s story and Fred’s promise to help fund a charitable foundation in Africa
Features
“Jerusalemites” – Photographer Sharon Gabay talks about his new book in a spectacular photo essay
By JOANNE PALMER (reprinted with permission from the New Jersey Jewish News and the Jewish Standard) If every person is a world, as our tradition tells us, then a city is filled with so many worlds that it’s impossible to imagine all those rubbing-together universes.
That’s particularly true of Jerusalem, one of the world’s oldest cities, at just about 5,000 years old, give or take; a recent demographic study, done in 2026, estimates its population at around 1,181,760. It has grown remarkably quickly; maybe people are drawn by its ancient, stony beauty, or by the history and other-worldliness that shimmers around it, or by the vibrant, modern cacophony of its diverse residents.
For the last 15 years, Sharon Gabay, a highly successful professional photographer whose bread-and-butter is stunning headshots, party pictures, and portraits of politicians and other social and legal strivers, has wandered through the city, just looking and taking pictures. He’s a 15th-generation Yerushalmi, and although now he lives in the Judean hills, in Moshav Nes Harim, near Ein Kerem and Beit Shemesh, he goes to Jerusalem every week to photograph what he sees.
He’s published six books of photography about Jerusalem. All are both beautiful and emotional. The most recent of them, “Jerusalemites,” is the newest and perhaps the most emotional, created with love, gestated in fear, and now born into a world that perhaps surprisingly radiates with hope.
Okay. What could that possibly mean?
It means that on October 11, 2023, Mr. Gabay went to Kfar Aza. “Everybody who could do anything did something, and I wanted to do something too,” he said. Some kind of response to the barbarism and terror and grief of the Hamas attack. Kfar Aza, one of the southernmost kibbutzim in Israel, was one of the hardest hit. “Because I am a documentary photographer, I asked to join Zaka,” Israel’s emergency response, rescue, and recovery nonprofit organization, “the first time they went in. I went in with them.
“I took pictures. I had two exhibitions using these pictures” — one of them “Holocaust in the Village,” is online — “but it hurt my mind. It was a trauma for me. And I didn’t touch my camera for two years. I just stayed in my studio in Nes Harim, taking psychiatry pills and trying to forget what I saw.
“And during this time I decided to make this book. I sat on it for two years, just learning how to do it effectively.
“There are almost no words in this book. Only pictures. And this is the message: We all live together 99 percent of the time. What the world sees about Jerusalem in the news is what happens maybe three or four percent of the time. All the rest of the time, all 99 percent of the people, other people around the world don’t know about. So I decided to make this book.
“The little text that I do have is in three languages — Hebrew, English, and Arabic. The languages spoken by the people of Jerusalem.”
The small number of Hebrew words in the text are written in a font created from the handwriting of Aner Shapira, who was 22 when he went to the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Simchat Torah — October 7, 2023. He took cover in a shelter with a group of other young Israelis, and he saved many of their lives by throwing seven explosive grenades that Hamas operatives threw into the shelter back out at the terrorists. The eighth exploded in his hand and killed him.
When Aner died, “he left behind a lot of songs that he wrote. They took his handwriting and made a font of it, and I chose to use it for the text.
“He was a Yerushalmi and he loved the city. He wrote about the diversity inside the city, and how you can see everything there. So I decided to put the text in his handwriting as a memorial to him.
When he began to make the book, Mr. Gabay had to look through the enormous archive he’d created. For 15 years he’s roamed the city. His camera is small, old, and unthreatening, a beaten-up Fuji with a visible crack on the case. He takes pictures unobtrusively, he said. He doesn’t ask permission. He just shoots. Usually people don’t even know they’ve been photographed. Sometimes they come across pictures of themselves in his work, and sometimes they email or message him, asking for a copy. Of course, he said, he always sends one.
Culling his vast collection of images was not easy, Mr. Gabay said. Putting it together “made me go out on the streets again.” The vast majority of the photos in the book were taken before October 7, but he took some later, to fill in logical gaps. Even now, with the book finished, he wanders the city’s streets one day every week, camera in hand.
As he prepared the book, he winnowed the vast library of images to 2,000, and from there he whittled it down to 300. For that first cull, “I went through them one by one, me and my cat, hiding from the missiles when they came in, because this is the Middle East. I did it day by day by day by day, until I managed to take it from one and a half million to 2,000.”
The second selection process “was much easier, because by then I knew how I wanted to do it. It is not a random collection of pictures. It is a story, from beginning to end; it is the long story of a city. So there is always a connection from each picture to the picture before and the picture after. But this took a long time.”
“The book turned out to be very successful. I sold all the copies before I launched it. One museum in Israel took 1,000 copies. It got to Herzog”— Israeli President Isaac Herzog —“and Huckabee” — Mike Huckabee is the U.S. ambassador to Israel — “and they both wrote letters about the book.
“Now I am working on the second edition. I want to distribute it to all the Jewish communities and Christian communities and Muslim communities that don’t hate us. There are no politics in this book. It is just people. The background to the pictures is all black because the only light we have in Jerusalem is the people.”
His message, Mr. Gabay said, is that “Jerusalem is not an apartheid city. Everyone lives here.
“I was raised in Jerusalem,” he said. “When we were little, my friends and I went to the Muslim quarter. Nothing happened. Once in a while there’d be some trouble, but most of the time we lived together with no trouble. My family has been here for more than 300 years. I have a picture of my great-great-grandpa in the Old City of Jerusalem. We are connected to the city, all my family is, and we really love it.
“Jerusalem should have tourists the way Vatican City does. People don’t come to Jerusalem.” His attempt to cure that problem is to show the city’s glories on social media. “I have more than 100,000 followers, and they are from all over the world,” he said. “I have Iranian followers and Saudi followers. Suddenly they see the city and they are surprised. They want to come to visit. They all of a sudden see that if they come here, they won’t be arrested because they are Muslim.
“I want to dedicate my work to telling the truth about Jerusalem.”
Mr. Gabay still takes pictures in Jerusalem because “I always go out to see if there is something new, because there is always something new to take pictures of in Jerusalem.”
He also takes pictures of politicians, and that’s a particularly busy area now because of the Israeli election set for October 27. “Today I had a member of the Knesset from Ram, the Muslim party. Mansour Abbas’s party. They want to participate in Israeli politics. They say, ‘We have a life here, and we want to live.’ And on the other side, I did a lot of people from the government we have now. Which, you know, is not the best government we’ve ever had.
“I tell them to their faces what I’m thinking. They know me. They know that I have a big mouth, and that I never, ever lie. So every politician from every side, even the one who was here today, sees the book. And I’ve never had anyone ever say that it’s one-sided or that it doesn’t tell the truth. It’s about all the tribes of Israel.
“I’ve put all my knowledge about Jerusalem and its people in the book, and I try to bring in exactly what happens in real life. I don’t try to stage anything. I am a viewer. I come. I see. I take a picture, and I save it. And people can see what life is like in Jerusalem.
Mr. Gabay also spends a great deal of time doing pro bono work. He takes photos for “At Eye Level,” a nonprofit that works with people with autism. His website showcases much of who he is and what he does; readers can learn more about his book here.
He has a traveling exhibit for the book; the photos can be printed locally so there are no shipping or customs costs, and he often comes to speak in the United States, talking about “Jerusalem and its unique human diversity.
“This book, ‘Jerusalemites,’ is about hope,” he said. “It tells people around the world that what you know about Jerusalem isn’t right. We live together, day by day, all of us, everyone. Yes, we have been at war for three years, but Jerusalem is still vibrating.
“Jerusalem is a hope that if you let people just live, they can live together, and they can make it a great city.”
Features
Musings from Dizengoff Street – by Bruce Brown (updated Sept. 10)
(Posted Sept 10)Honey cakes. Honey cakes. Honey cakes. It’s that time of year. Yummy! Here comes Rosh HaShana 5787. And its…. You guessed it. Honey cake season. That light brown loaf our baba used to make. Starting a few weeks before Rosh HaShana and extending through Yom Kippur – a first bite to break the fast and usher in a sweet year- honey cakes are found throughout the country. The familiar sight of the ready-made, pre-packaged, ‘assembly-line’ honey cakes wrapped in cheap cellophane found in Grocery stores. The freshly baked honey cakes adorning window displays at local bakeries. The exorbitantly priced, gourmet honey cake desserts offered at fancy Tel Aviv restaurants. And of course, honey cakes festooning the festive, colorful, Rosh Hashana dinner tables across Israel. I bake my own honey cake which is pretty good. My wife and kids would beg to differ. But these slightly glazed honey cakes -of my own culinary, shtetl inspired creation- are heartedly enjoyed by me as I gain several honey cake induced pounds. Shana tova!
(Posted Sept. 8) Hoarding. A combination of my own little wartime PTSD and some recent headlines about Iran trying to coordinate a multifront attack (is that capability still there?!) and October 7 like rumblings from the West Bank (or Judea & Samaria, depending if you wear a kippa and if its knitted and if it tilts to this side or that side -that’s a shtetl insider joke). I digress and Yikes! And we just had a nation-wide drill of the IDF’s top-level headquarters preparedness for such scenarios. Double Yikes! So ya. I’m always checking and rechecking that we have way more than enough of some things. The thought of entering another prolonged war and some stuff no longer available, even for a short time, scares the bejeebers out of me. Just writing about it triggers the ‘go and buy’ dopamine hit. Medications. Toilet paper. Bottled water. Canned goods. Also worried about the country running out of bullets. But I can’t hoard those.
(Posted Sept. 5) An open letter to the zany and zealous mouthpieces of those delightful, anti-Israel protests held regularly in Toronto. In the heavily Jewish Bathurst & Sheppard area no less. Fear and harassment in the community? Not by the hairs of our chinny chin chins.
Dear Friends.
Are you serious.
Sincerely,
Bruce Brown, a Zionist who does not rape children. Who does not murder children. Who does not eat children. And, get this, who lives in Israel.
(Ed. note: To better understand what Bruce is talking about, go to this story on our website: Police open hate-crime investigation)
(Posted Sept. 1) Can you be more of an international embarrassment and liability? Yes talking about Israeli’s antagonist extraordinaire and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Declaring that Israel should kill ’30-40 Gazans a day’. Seriously?!?! His actual statement may have been more refined and qualified. But it doesn’t really make a difference. That’s the takeaway. Like whose side is he on anyway. Talk about giving our detractors ammunition to delegitimize our little shtetl. Hello?!?!
And a few days later. Showing off in front of a gallows site under construction at a high security prison. Seriously?!?! The death penalty for terrorists. Right or not – I think the former. But like can you give us reason to be compared to an extremist state. That’s the takeaway. Like whose side is he on anyway. Talk about giving our detractors ammunition to delegitimize our little shtetl. Hello?!?!
Serenity now!
(Posted August 28) Kites. Color. Childhood. Hamas and friends should watch Mary Poppins with the final kite flying scene. Remember that song, Let’s Go Fly A Kite. Ya, I know. Somewhat ethnocentric. But still…. I have fond memories of flying kites with my kids. Down the Mediterranean shoreline in Tel Aviv. At the Ness Tziona kite flying festival. Along the green grounds of the Weizmann Institute. Laughing and running. Looking to the sky with awe. Multi-shades and fancy. Kites.
With your fist ‘olding tight
To the string of your kite
…oh, oh, oh!
Lets go fly a kite
Kites. Fun. Laughter. Innocence.
Kites. Not an instrument of war.
(Posted August 25) How principled can you be! Ireland -one of the most anti-Israel and foggiest countries in the EU- insisted that its government’s new, 60$M executive jet NOT be equipped with Elbit’s FalconEye navigation system, which helps pilots navigate in fog -how ironic- and other difficult weather conditions. Without this unique system the plane must be diverted to alternative airports. This a part of the government’s official boycott of Israeli goods. So good luck to Prime Minister Michael Martin in landing his aircraft in Dublin.
And despite some negative sentiment towards everything Israel, Elbit achieved over 32$B in backorders with Europe driving much of its export growth. On a more personal muse. The morning after Iran’s first attack on Israel (April 13 2024), I woke up not with fear and panic. Well. Okay. Some of that. But also great excitement regarding an investment opportunity which developed overnight. Actually it was the wife’s suggestion. After Israel successfully intercepted over three hundred missiles and drones – showcasing the strength of Israel’s defense industry- my wife had a eureka moment. What better public relations for Israel’s defense industry. Let’s buy stock in Elbit, a key player in that ecosystem. We did. And about eighteen months later we cashed in. With about 150% profit. This is not an endorsement to buy… blah, blah, blah….
Again. Good luck to Prime Minister Martin.
(Posted August 21) Sometimes musings are terribly sad. But should be shared.
Happy belated birthday beautiful Ariel. Turned seven on August 5th. Thought about him and his younger brother Kfir and mother Shiri. All murdered by Hamas shortly after their unbelievable and surreal abduction on Oct 7 2023.
As I was driving home today. “I Thank You Child” by Zakk Wylde shuffled onto my Spotify. Always kills me, this song. It was played by Yarden, the father who himself was held hostage, at the funeral of his family. For Ariel and Kfir. The lyrics chilling. The frequent drum rolls haunting.
It was you who made living all worth the while
Oh, I thank you, my child
Comfort in your eyes
For the warmth inside your smile
Faith’s done gone astray
It was you who made living all the while
All my fears repressed
Oh lovin’ you child it’s the best
This song. Written almost thirty years ago. Finds its devastating meaning today. With the Bibas family tragedy.
How.
Listen to the song here:
(Posted August 18, 2026) And the beat goes on in the strait. A bit quieter lately although may be heating up again with the 60day ‘ceasefire’ officially expired. And while Iran occasionally lashed out over the last two months, they did not attack Israel. How do you spell deterrence. According to my Yiddisha mama, its spelled ‘Pftt. Pftt. Pftt‘.
(August 14, 2026) Despite three years of varying degrees of warfare. Moody’s biannual report of the Israeli economy was quite positive. Basically, the report saw no pressures on Israel’s credit rating. While the macro data remains strong, Israel still faces a complex geopolitical situation further complicated by upcoming elections (we pondered about how crazy that is in an earlier muse). And Israeli’s inflation rate for the first half of 2026 fell to a historic five year low of 1.2% (vs Canada’s 2.6%). As for my own pocketbook. Haven’t had an infamous Israeli bank overdraft in years. So all is fine.
If that’s not enough economic voodoo talk for one musing. According to one famous barometer. Israel moved to second place in the Economist’s Big Mac Index. Introduced in 1986, this tasty indicator compares the purchasing power parity across countries by measuring the price of a McDonald’s Big Mac -which most can relate to- against the benchmark U.S. burger. So while a Big Mac in the U.S. costs $6.22. In Israel it costs $7.67, the second most expensive place to buy the hamburger in the world, Switzerland being the most pricey at a whopping (no reference to Wendy’s) $9.04. While the cheapest Big Mac can be enjoyed in Indonesia at only $2.38. Canada ranked 22nd of the fifty-four countries considered, at $5.85. Parity. Smarity. I’m going for my Big Mac fix. Just after I finish writing this muse….
(August 11, 2026) Bravo Boy George. We certainly will dance again! And what better way than with his new reggae tune. Now Boy George is dealing with a hostile backlash against his just stand for Israel. Having to withdraw from London’s East End production of Jesus Christ Superstar where he was going to play – guess it. King Herod. Never a big Culture Club fan, but I am anyway -as a sign of support- going to download his greatest hits to my Spotify library. And hoping to have a chance to buy a concert ticket should Boy George perform in Israel. Kind of reminds me of Bob Dylan’s 1983 song Neighborhood Bully. Also in defense of Israel. I’m going to download that song as well. Although don’t think he was hounded the way Boy George is now. Sign of the times I guess.
+++++
Coming clean. I sometimes find myself chanting, to no one in particular, that snappy little ditty ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ Now why can’t we come up with something as catchy. With such an impressive gene pool of great Jewish songwriters. George Gershwin. Irving Berlin. Burt Bacharach. Carole King. Neil Diamond. Leanard Choen. Paul Simon. Gene Simmons, Amy Winehouse. Bob Dylan. And yes, even the Buddhist Boy George. And still… gurnish! No wonder we’re losing the global PR battle
(August 8, 2026) Outside Basimta Café in Central Jerusalem. Love the red shirt against a tiny sea of black. Not sure I am shrugging because of the ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat or the lack of an ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat. For the last six weeks Israeli headlines shouted about the cafe chaos. With the ultra-religious blocking entrances and storming the café. While shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Upsetting the secular amongst us just wanting to enjoy our Saturday iced matchas. So the wife and I thought we would check it out. And. Yes. Buy something to support the business. Uproar. Not. Blocked entrances. Not. Storming the café. Not. Albeit there were police barriers separating the devout protesters from the coffee drinkers. The protesters being just a few dozen black clad, pious Jews. Mostly teenagers. And yes. Shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Certainly underwhelming in its reported mayhem. Reminds me of the famous saying misattributed to Mark Twain – “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do, you’re misinformed.” But I did enjoy my iced matcha.
(August 6, 2026) Here we go again. Another round of forever negotiations. As someone who negotiates for a living. The way things are going in the straits. If I had to recommend a book on the subject to a new hire. Between The Art of the Deal, A Presidential Edition by Donald J. Trump or The Real Art of the Deal by the Mullahs of Iran with a special forward by the IRGC. Well. I would choose the latter.
(August 3) Bravo Yoav Segalovitz, Liberal Yesh Atid MK and Monsour Abbas, United Arab Ra’am MK and party head. For breaking a glass ceiling where a Jewish lawmaker joins an Arab political party. No less a political earthquake in my little shtetl. Which can significantly impact coalition block arithmetic and posturing and strategy in the upcoming elections. Now Ra’am can be considered a legitimate ‘Zionist’ partner when forming coalition blocks and potentially pushing the ‘center left/right’ party over the 60 seat majority threshold. In our crazy parliamentary democracy defined by a multi-party (about fourteen!!), proportional representation system. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Israel’s proportional representation model of governance is the best parliamentary democracy system except for all other forms of working democracies. Stay tuned for more amateurish political musings as we move towards Israel’s 26th national election – five of them held since 2019.
(August 1) Although both sides say they are open to diplomacy. Neither really trusts the other. And American military action, or its threat, continues. I read headlines in the middle of the night -it’s a nervous habit lately– that the Dynamic Duo of Trump and Netanyahu may again strike in unison. Possibly this weekend. Yikes! Prompting me, at 2:30 AM, to dash around the house stocking my safe room. Bottled water. Canned food. Medicines. Documents. The beat goes on….
If it’s crazy here. It’s insane in Italy. With a recent online ‘Jew Hunt’ in the Milan area. Before being removed, the digital forms urged reportings of Israelis and Italian Jews staying in local hotels. The infamous Global Sumud Movement -yes, the one coordinating ‘peace and humanitarian’ flotillas to Gaza- was somehow connected. Although they deny involvement?! This deranged decree was looking to identify Zionist tourism and Zionist neo-colonization in Italy. I’ll stick with stocking the saferoom.
Then there’s New York Mayor Mamdani, a Global Sumud Movement supporter, threatening to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if he comes to New York. But since discovered he has no legal right for such a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic antic. Maybe Mandami should be arrested! Or at least impeached. For being a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic mayor.
Here’s a post Bruce sent us Friday, July 31:
WARTIME MUSINGS
Should credible threats against FLOTUS and ‘FSOTUS’ (first son..) not be justification to attack first.
As for yesterday’s summit. Netanyahu really can’t win. Explainer. If Trump now attacks without victory its ’cause of Netanyahu. If Trump now attacks with victory its ’cause of Trump. And, in Israel, if Trump doesn’t attack -victory or not- Netanyahu failed in his eighth meeting with Trump. And if Trump does attack -victory or not- half the country will vilify Bibi anyway. Missing a permutation?
Ya. I know. Kinda’ need a definition of victory for that musing to work.
And here in my little shtetle. We go to sleep unsure if there will be a code red in the middle of the night. And if not. We wake up thinking it will be tonight. How do you define stress?
Seemed like an appropriate way to end this musing.
Bruce Brown is a former Winnipegger who made aliyah to Israel over 35 years ago. Bruce first began writing for us – in his own inimitable style, in 2012, during what was known as “Operation Pillar of Defense.” His occasional musings on aspects of life in Israel that were far from what you’d typically read in other reports from Israel were hugely popular – both in the print Jewish Post & News and on this website.
We’re now glad to report that Bruce is back writing for us – this time on a regular basis. We will post Bruce’s reports as they arrive – with the date of each post at the beginning of that post.
Here’s some information about Bruce – and awards he’s received for his writing:
Bruce Brown. Canadian born. Now living in Israel (for a long time). Bruce works in Israel’s hi-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night. He received the American Jewish Press Association’s award for writing excellence in 2019 and 2025. And wrote the1998 satire, “An Israeli is….”. Bruce’s visuals are AI-assisted and created with ChatGPT under his inimitable visual concept and creative direction. Bruce’s musings are political, social, economic and personal. With lots of biting, contrarian, sardonic, irreverent and mischievous insights.
Features
Winnipeg’s Jewish Community and the Question of Online Casino Bonuses: What Manitoba Players Should Know
A reader wrote in last month asking a simple question: is it legal to play online casino games in Manitoba, and if so, what’s actually a fair deal? It’s the kind of practical, money-conscious question this paper’s readers tend to ask before spending anything, the same instinct that shapes how the community shops, budgets for the High Holidays, or decides which shul renovation appeal to support. Manitoba’s online gambling landscape has changed enough in the last few years that the old assumptions no longer hold, and it’s worth walking through what’s actually there now.
Manitoba’s Online Casino Landscape in 2026
Manitoba doesn’t have an open, competitive online casino market the way Ontario does. Since April 2022, Ontario has allowed private operators to apply for licences and compete for players directly. Manitoba still runs a single-operator model: Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries (MLL), the Crown corporation that also runs the province’s Liquor Marts and lottery products, operates the one legal online casino for Manitoba residents, PlayNow.com. That’s the whole regulated market in this province. Outside that single option, Manitobans who search for online casinos will find dozens of sites willing to take their money and their information, a pattern this paper’s own Local/Canadian News coverage has tracked as provinces across the country adjust their approach to regulated gambling. Some are licensed elsewhere, Malta, Curaçao, the UK, and operate in a legal grey zone for Canadian players; enforcement against them has been inconsistent for years. None of them answers to Manitoba’s regulator, and none of them contributes a dollar back to this province.
How Casino Welcome Bonuses Are Structured and Regulated
A welcome bonus is usually presented as free money: deposit $50, get $50 in bonus funds, sometimes with free spins attached. What matters is the fine print attached to it. Wagering requirements determine how many times you must play through the bonus amount before you can withdraw any winnings; a 30x requirement on a $50 bonus means $1,500 in total wagering before that money is really yours. Game weighting matters too: slots typically count 100% toward that requirement, table games often count 10% or less, which punishes anyone who prefers blackjack over slot spins. Time limits, usually 7 to 30 days, and maximum bet sizes while a bonus is active, round out the list of terms most players skip past. On PlayNow.com, these terms are published in plain language and reviewed by a provincial Crown corporation with community accountability baked into its mandate, the same mandate that funds Manitoba’s healthcare and education budgets. That’s a meaningfully different relationship than the one an offshore site has with a Manitoba customer.
The Difference Between Licensed Canadian Operators and Offshore Alternatives
This is where the practical stakes are highest. A licensed Canadian platform is subject to specific consumer protections: verified game fairness, dispute resolution through a regulator you can actually reach, and deposit-limit tools that work. An offshore operator answers to a foreign licensing body, if it answers to anyone at all. Winnipeggers who’ve had a withdrawal disputed by an offshore casino know how limited the recourse actually is; there’s no Manitoba office to call and no local regulator with jurisdiction. Across the country, players comparing regulated options increasingly start by checking a best casino bonus Canada comparison rather than relying on whichever ad appears first. It’s a reasonable way to sort a legitimate Canadian-licensed platform from an offshore look-alike before depositing anything.
Responsible Gambling Resources Available in Manitoba
This part matters more than the bonus terms. MLL runs Informed Gambling, its dedicated responsible-gambling program, which includes deposit and time-limit tools, self-exclusion options, and educational material aimed at helping players recognize when a habit has become a problem before it becomes a crisis. Manitobans concerned about their own gambling, or a family member’s, can call the Manitoba Addictions Helpline, toll-free at 1-855-662-6605, for confidential support. Shared Health, formerly the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, also provides professional counselling free of charge to anyone who needs it, regardless of ability to pay. For a community that has always taken care of its own, through the Chesed Shel Emes, through synagogue-run support networks, through the kind of quiet checking-in that happens after a funeral or a hard year, these resources are worth knowing before they’re needed, not after. Chasing a Canadian online casino bonus isn’t worth it if the wagering requirements are already causing strain. That’s a conversation worth having, honestly, inside families and inside the community, before it becomes a private one.
Where to Compare Current Casino Bonus Offers Across Licensed Platforms
None of this is an argument against playing. It’s an argument for playing somewhere accountable, with terms you understand, and for a modest amount you’ve already decided you can afford to lose. Manitoba’s single-operator model makes that comparison simpler than Ontario’s crowded market, but it also means doing the homework on wagering requirements and licensing status matters just as much, if not more, when there’s only one legal option and a long list of unregulated ones competing for the same click. Ask the question before depositing, not after; that’s the same advice this community gives about most things worth being careful with.
