Manitoba pool builder charged with 11 additional counts of fraud: RCMP
20 people allege Kurt Wittin scammed them out of a combined total of about $700,000, RCMP say
A man operating a Manitoba-based pool company once featured on HGTV is facing 11 more charges of fraud over $5,000 after he allegedly took deposits for pools he never delivered.
Kurt Wittin was initially arrested and charged with nine counts of fraud over $5,000 in November following an investigation by the Manitoba RCMP's cyber and financial crime unit.
Since then, more people have reported being scammed by the pool builder, bringing the total number of victims to 20, an RCMP news release said on Wednesday.
Wittin is accused of fraudulently taking a combined total of more than $700,000 from people across Canada and the U.S., the news release said.
Wittin's pool sales are done under several company names — Seventeen Pools, 204 Container Pools and Kustom Container Builders — and he's been under investigation since 2023, after multiple fraud complaints were filed against Seventeen Pools, police previously said.
A CBC Marketplace report on Wittin in May 2023 was based on interviews with several people who alleged they'd been swindled out of tens of thousands of dollars. Some of them said they became interested in purchasing from Seventeen Pools after Wittin appeared on the popular HGTV show Fixer to Fabulous in 2022.
Mounties continue to investigate and encourage people to contact their local RCMP detachment to make a report if they are a potential victim of fraud associated with Wittin.