The first part of a multi-series story

By BERNIE BELLAN

Introduction

The story you’re about to read originally began as a work of non-fiction. Although everything in this story is true, I’ve changed the names of most of the individuals mentioned in this story – to protect their identities.

This story is about a very sick man who lives in Winnipeg and who has caused terrible damage to many different people over a long period of time by promising he would invest in projects with different individuals. The reality, however, was that the person making all those promises was – and still is, deeply delusional. In fact, while he has very little money, for years he has believed he was someone of immense wealth – and has been telling people all over the world that phoney story. Further, because he is actually highly intelligent and, at one point, had a very successful business career, he has been quite adept at convincing different people all over the world who were looking for someone to help invest in their particular projects that he would invest in those projects.

I originally posted that story – in two parts, on two separate days, to this website in early February 2026. When I posted that story though, I didn’t hide the name of the person who is now the subject of this story. Two days after the first part of that story appeared on this website, however, I received a warning email from a lawyer – who happens to be someone I’ve known for a long time, but who also explained that he’s a cousin of the individual who was the subject of my story. In that email the lawyer wrote that, unless I removed that story from my website immediately, I could be sued for defamation.

That lawyer said that he was acting for the parents of the man about whom I had written my story. Receiving that email incensed me because, as you read on, you will see that many of the individuals who suffered greatly as a result of what had happened to them when they were contacted by the “con man” about whom this story is written, had attempted to reach out to the con man’s parents, asking them to do something to keep their son from continuing to deceive individuals with promises that he would invest in the various projects which these individuals hoped to see succeed.

But – that email had the desired effect. As I will explain, I’ve had previous experience with being threatened with a defamation lawsuit and I had no desire to go through that experience again. So, I took the story down.

This story though, was something I was very ambivalent about writing in the first place because it’s about someone who suffers from a very serious mental disorder and, in my career as a journalist, I’ve preferred to stay away from doing medical stories, especially ones that relate to psychiatric illnesses. I have had writers who specialize in medical stories work for me and I know how much effort they would put into understanding what it was they were writing about when it came to specific illnesses. It’s time consuming to do the necessary research and not easy for a writer who doesn’t have a medical background to understand the terminology involved in doing those kinds of stories.

This story, therefore, is not intended to offer a deep dive into the one particular form of mental disorder that, it seems apparent, has affected the principal subject of this story – in this case a delusional disorder – or psychosis. I don’t know his medical history, so when I say that he has a delusional disorder, I’m offering that assessment based entirely on his behaviour, not on any actual medical reports.

In speaking with his mother many years ago, after I had first met the man who is the subject of this story, I was told by her that her son is bi-polar. Whether he is or is not bi-polar though, he is totally delusional. About that, there can be no doubt. Further, his behaviour clearly fits a diagnosis of a delusional psychosis, so I am going to refer to him throughout this story as someone who is suffering from a delusional psychosis. For the purpose of this story, I’ve given him a name which is not his real name: Fred Devlin.

I have no idea what may have triggered the delusion that so clearly manifests itself in Devlin’s behaviour, but the harm he has caused to so many people over the years is a clear indication that his disorder has not been brought under control or, even if it has been brought under control at times, it couldn’t have been for very long, since I spoke to many individuals who had been contacted by Devlin, going back quite a few years – all of whom told similar stories of being totally deceived by him.

I won’t pretend to understand what may have led Devlin to become so totally delusional that he can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. He has been hospitalized many times, according to individuals with whom I spoke, but it is apparent that even when he’s been hospitalized, he still behaves in a delusional manner.

According to material found on the internet – “Delusional disorder is a psychiatric condition characterized by the presence of one or more fixed, false beliefs (delusions) lasting for at least one month, without other prominent psychotic symptoms like hallucinations or disorganized thought. Individuals often function normally apart from the delusion, which can be non-bizarre (situations that could occur in real life)….Their delusions are not caused from drugs or general disorders.”

“Delusional psychosis (or delusional disorder) is treated primarily through a combination of antipsychotic medications and psychotherapy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), often requiring long-term management. Treatment aims to reduce symptoms, improve functioning, and build trust, as individuals frequently lack insight into their condition and may resist care.”

I don’t know enough about Devlin to know what kind of treatment he may have received over the years but, whatever treatments there may have been, they clearly didn’t work. He has carried on a long pattern of promising substantial financial support to a great many different individuals – who put their trust in him, often signed contracts with him and, in many cases, spent huge numbers of hours working on projects, only to learn that it was all for naught because Devlin was a total fraud. Many of those stories will be told in the following pages.

Further, when he has been confronted over his lies, Devlin has consistently lashed out at anyone who would dare suggest he’s delusional, threatening those individuals with lawsuits or other forms of retaliation. Even as I’ve been writing this story, apparently word of what I’ve been doing has filtered back to Devlin, and he’s threatened different individuals who have been telling me their stories that he will commit great harm to them if they continue to cooperate with me.

Some of the individuals whose stories are told in this story related to me that they would often get phone calls from Devlin while he was hospitalized in different psychiatric wards. He would make excuses for his being hospitalized – that he was sick with various physical illnesses whose nature would vary, but he would never admit that he had been placed in a psychiatric ward.

It is also possible that, since he is totally delusional, he did believe that he was in the hospital for reasons that had nothing to do with him being mentally ill. At one point, for instance, when he was asked by another psychiatric patient why he was in the psych ward, Devlin replied that he owned the hospital and he just wanted to see how they were treating patients there. As you can read when I tell that story in more detail later on, the psych patient who asked Devlin that question didn’t think there was anything unusual about Devlin’s answer. That tells you all you need to know about the state of mind of the person who told me that story.

Although I was somewhat amused that he didn’t find Devlin’s having told him that he owned the hospital where they both found themselves at all difficult to believe, I found that a great many of the other individuals who were caught up in Devlin’s con also suffered from various psychological disorders of one sort or another. In some ways it goes to explain how otherwise intelligent sounding people might have fallen for stories that one would normally expect would be dismissed as utter nonsense.

One of the mysteries in learning about Devlin though, was who was putting him into the hospital on those occasions when he ended up in the psych ward? Was it his wife? Was it his parents? It really doesn’t matter – but his wife and his parents have been complicit in allowing Devlin to perpetrate his delusional behaviour for years and, I would argue, bear responsibility for the damage he has caused to so many different people. What does matter is that he has engaged in communication with so many different individuals over a great many years while suffering from the delusion that he is immensely wealthy and is capable of offering huge financial help to trusting individuals. (There are other aspects of his delusion too, about which I’ll write, such as that he is guarded by agents from Israel’s Mossad, that he is very involved in helping maintain Israel’s security, and that he owns huge tracts of land in Winnipeg and in Israel.)

One of the things I learned during the course of my investigation into Devlin’s long career as a con artist – and I have to reiterate that he didn’t actually realize he was a con artist, was that he likes to spend his days in a very fancy Winnipeg hotel that’s very popular with Winnipeg’s business crowd – the Fairmont, where he holds court. Devlin has a regular table in a restaurant there and is well known by many of the staff there.

He also likes to hang out an another nearby spot that’s also popular with the business crowd: Hy’s. In fact, after I had finished writing most of this story I was surprised to be contacted by Devlin himself, inviting me to meet him at either the Fairmont or Hy’s. That very strange meeting, which happened to take place at Hy’s, forms the basis of the final chapter of this story.

One of the things I asked Devlin at that meeting, however, is who was paying for all his meals at those two establishments? As I will show, Fred Devlin has no visible means of support, which means that someone else is providing him with the money that is allowing him to continue perpetrating his con – even as I write this. I asked Devlin that very question when I sat face to face with him, but when he still insisted that he is fabulously wealthy – a trillionaire nine times over as a matter of fact, I persisted in asking him whether it’s not the case that his parents have been providing for him for years? In fact, it’s his parents’ role, also his wife’s, in allowing Devlin to carry on his nonsense for so many years that has allowed him to inflict so much damage on so many people’s lives.

Many of the individuals with whom I spoke – or with whom I exchanged a lengthy email correspondence in one particular case, recounted their having reached out to Devlin’s parents in attempts to have them intercede once those individuals realized that Devlin was a complete fraud. Those attempts were all met with the same explanation from Devlin’s parents, I was told: that Fred Devlin was not well – and to leave it at that. In no case did his parents offer to intercede, even when told how much Devlin’s behaviour had so negatively affected so many individuals.

You may be asking yourself: Why write about someone who was – and still is, so clearly mentally ill? The reason is that what Fred Devlin did – to so many different people and, even as I’m writing this, is apparently still attempting to do, was so awful, that when I was first told about him in an email I received on January 16, 2026, my initial reaction was: What could I do to expose this guy and keep him from harming anyone else? My thinking was that if I wrote about him and published something on my website, at the very least others who might be contacted by him, but who would do an internet search to verify who he was, would see my story and realize he’s a total fraud.

Unfortunately, when I was threatened with a lawsuit over what I had written – and I immediately withdrew what I had published, I thought that instead, I’ll write the same story, but I’ll use a different name for the subject of my story – and not use his wife’s or his parents’ real names either.

In addition, I had already promised everyone with whom I spoke for the purpose of gathering material for this story that I would not use their real names in whatever story I would write. I didn’t want to embarrass any o f them by revealing that they had fallen for Devlin’s deception. Thus, my giving everyone different names than their real ones is consistent with what I had told each of them I would do. What I had told each of the individuals whose lives were impacted by Paul Devlin though, was that I wanted to write about what had happened to each of them and include it in a larger story.

Each part of this continuing story will tell a different story – as told to me by each of the individuals with whom I communicated over a period of time in an attempt to understand just how Fred Devlin had convinced each one of them that he was fabulously wealthy and he was going to help each of them with particular projects in which they were involved. How Devlin found each of these individuals is in itself a mystery. Apparently, he is very adept at networking, so that one individual whom he would contact would put him in touch with another individual – and so on, to the point where he built up a large network of contacts.

As I’ve become immersed in this story, however, I’ve been playing a more active role than simply as a journalist trying to write a story. I’ve been quite involved in trying to help one of Devlin’s victims – who suffered the worst financial losses of any of the individuals with whom I spoke who had told me they had fallen victim to Fred Devlin’s promises of financial help. I’ve been trying to help this one individual launch a lawsuit against Devlin. Although we did garner the interest of one of Winnipeg’s top civil litigators, in the end the notion of filing a lawsuit against Devlin was abandoned for the simple reason that it’s pointless to sue someone who has no money or assets and, as the lawyer explained, it would not be possible to attach either Devlin’s wife’s name or his parents’ names to any lawsuit – no matter how much one might argue they bore responsibility for his behaviour by not keeping him under careful supervision.

I’ve also been attempting to contact various police agencies to see why no fraud charges have been filed against Devlin. That story is ongoing as I write this, but here we’re running up against bureaucratic police behaviour – in which one police agency is reluctant to cooperate with another police agency. To illustrate, a detective in the York Regional Police department did open an investigation into Devlin back in January 2026 at the behest of an individual who lives in Toronto who was one of Devlin’s victim but, since Devlin himself lives in Winnipeg, that detective sent the file to Winnipeg Police Service. However, the detective in the York Regional Police department attached a file number to that file. When the individual in Toronto who had filed the complaint with York Regional Police contacted WPS to ask whether a file had been received from York Regional Police the answer he was given was that the “case file number you refer to would not be associated with a WPS numbering system as our case numbers would start with a letter, year, and file. (C2600XXXXX).

 “As such, I did not find a any case number associated with Mr. … in our police records.”

What was strange though, was that the detective with the York Regional Police had sent that file by registered mail – and it had been signed for by someone in the WPS.

When the person who filed that original complaint asked WPS to search for the file, he did receive a confirmation that they had found the file – but would not provide any further information. So, who knows? Maybe long after this is published we’ll hear something about the WPS actually launching an investigation into the person we’re calling Fred Devlin here.

I’ve also been trying to help another of Devlin’s victims – this time someone who lives in Africa, try to restore his reputation in his community. This poor fellow had gone so far, at Devlin’s behest, as to set up a charitable foundation in the phoney name of Devlin’s supposed group of companies – using money borrowed from someone in his community, after Devlin had promised him he would provide funding for that charitable foundation. That African individual has told me several times that he is thinking of committing suicide, both because he is now a pariah in his community for having promised the members of his community that a large charitable foundation was about to be set up there, and because he is in debt to a money lender in his community to whom he owes a great deal of money with no practical means of paying off that debt.

I actually went so far as to send this poor fellow enough money to stave off the money lender from coming after him for a few months. As I write this, I don’t know what the African individual’s status is re the debt he owes, although I am staying in constant communication with him – in no small part because I don’t want him to kill himself over what Fred Devlin did to him. The story of the African man who just wanted to help others by starting a charitable foundation – that was supposed to be funded by Fred Devlin, is told in the second last chapter of this story.

So, I have more than a dispassionate interest in telling a good story. I’ve placed myself directly into the story itself – and my hope is that, at some point I’ll be able to report that, at the very least, Devlin is no longer perpetrating his frauds on anyone else. That could happen in one of three ways: The individual whom I’ve been assisting in finding a lawyer who would be willing to sue Devlin has also been in contact with police authorities. Perhaps there will be a charge or charges laid against Devlin but, in truth, it’s been more than three months since the police were first contacted about Devlin by that individual and, to date, nothing has happened.

The second possibility is that we may discover that Devlin actually has a sizeable amount of money – perhaps given to him by his parents. He does spend his days in fairly expensive surroundings – as I noted. While a lawsuit seems improbable at this point, the lawyer who was considering whether to file one certainly agreed that there are very solid grounds to file one, but warned that it would be fruitless unless it can be shown that Devlin either has money or owns some assets of real value.

The final possibility is that the individuals who are closest to Devlin – his wife and his parents, would take concerted action to put a stop to his behaviour. All they have to do, realistically, is make sure he never comes into contact with a phone or a computer ever again. It’s by contacting unsuspecting people all over the world and feeding them a line about how wealthy he is that Devlin has been able to carry on his gigantic fraud for so many years. But, if he’s not able to contact anyone – via a phone or a computer, then it would be possible to put a stop to his behaviour. Is that so difficult to do? I suppose the answer is yes, it’s very difficult to do. How do you keep someone from obtaining a phone these days? At the very least, if he could be monitored closely then Devlin might be prevented from reaching out to more innocent victims which, unless he’s stopped, he is bound to persist in doing.

I should note that, in writing a story that is still ongoing, I’m having to make constant additions to the story as new information comes to my attention. For instance, even though I’ve already noted that I had published a story on my website about the real person whom I’ve chosen to refer to as Fred Devlin here – and I did remove it, I have now been made aware that apparently someone managed to retrieve what I had posted even after it was expunged, and another website was created with the sole purpose of republishing what I had written. Thus, I might still be held accountable for what I originally published – even though I did remove it from my website. But, since that story has apparently been quite accessible for quite some time, according to what I was told, and I haven’t heard anything more from the lawyer who warned me I could be sued for defamation, my guess is that Devlin’s parents realize that suing me would only cause them greater embarrassment than if they simply did nothing.

Perhaps, too, the embarrassment of seeing that story still disseminated on the internet might be enough to motivate Devlin’s parents to keep him in check – something, I would suggest, they have been fully capable of doing ever since he developed his psychosis. Since his parents have refused to discuss their son’s condition with me, I have no idea what steps they may have taken over the years to harness his behaviour, ever since they learned that their son is mentally ill. I do feel compassion for them – and how much anguish their son must have brought to their lives, but the fact is he has brought so much grief upon so many others that any compassion I feel for them is outweighed by the anger I have that they have been complicit in allowing him to con so many people.

Next: My own meeting with the delusional con man six years ago