Shelley Fillipoff, mother of missing woman, blames son for cocaine, weapons found in her home

An Ottawa-area woman charged with money laundering, drug and weapons offences says her son, also charged in the case, never told her he was stashing cocaine and weapons in her home.

In a lengthy podcast interview, Shelley Fillipoff, 59, whose daughter vanished in 2012, spoke publicly for the first time about the charges, which were laid in March 2016 after an OPP investigation.

"My son, my older son — Matthew, who's 28 — had been using my house as a stash house for cocaine. And I was unaware of it," Fillipoff told The Night Time Podcast.

"And the police apparently had been tracking him for some time, and because it's my house but not his address they felt that I must, in some way, be involved, and therefore charged me."

'I was in no way aware'

During raids in 2016, OPP found cocaine, marijuana, bundles of cash, a sawed-off shotgun, a double-barrel shotgun, ammunition and a switchblade at Shelley Fillipoff's home in Lanark County, southwest of Ottawa.

She was charged with laundering the proceeds of crime, possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, marijuana possession, unauthorized possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm, and unauthorized possession of a firearm.

Her son — a real estate agent OPP allege was supplying cocaine to street-level traffickers in Lanark County — was charged with three counts of possessing various drugs for the purpose of trafficking, fleeing police, dangerous operation of a vehicle, two firearms-related charges and possession of property over $5,000 obtained by crime.

"I was in no way aware of what Matthew was doing. It goes without saying that Matthew didn't announce to me, his mother, what he was up to," she told the podcast.

Daughter disappeared in 2012

Fillipoff said her children "come and go as they please" from her home, and that she wouldn't have suspected her son or monitored his behaviour while he was visiting. She also said that in her "emotional state," she was in her own world a lot of the time and wasn't tracking his comings and goings.

In November 2012, Fillipoff's daughter, Emma Fillipoff, mysteriously disappeared in Victoria, B.C. CBC's the fifth estate covered the case in 2014.

Shelley Fillipoff has been trying to find her ever since, partly by running the Help Find Emma Fillipoff Facebook page.

She told the podcast that after the criminal charges were laid against her, people started leaving negative comments on the page with links to media coverage about it.

"I was very hurt, I was angered, very upset over the fact that a number of people — not people that know me, anyone that knows me has been extremely supportive, I have an extremely supportive community, people that know me know that these are false accusations — but a number of people chose Emma's Facebook page to attack me, to make negative comments in regards to the charges against me," she said.

"That page is intended for Emma and Emma only, it is to help in the search for Emma, it has nothing to do with me. So that is the most salient point that I would like to make. It was very hurtful, it was very hurtful."

Reached by phone at her home in Lanark County, Shelley Fillipoff would not comment on what she told the podcast or the charges against her. Her Ottawa-based lawyer, Trevor Brown, also had no comment.

Fillipoff's next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 19.