RCMP charge Manitoba pool builder accused of defrauding customers of thousands of dollars

A 50-year-old man has been charged with multiple counts of fraud after allegedly defrauding people from across Canada and the United States of thousands of dollars through his Manitoba-based pool company, police say.

Kurt Wittin was arrested Nov. 5 and charged with nine counts of fraud over $5,000 following an investigation by the Manitoba RCMP’s cyber and financial crime unit, police said in a news release Friday.

He has been under investigation since 2023 after his pool company, Seventeen Pools, was the subject of numerous fraud complaints, police said.

People from across Canada and the United States said they sent money to Wittin’s company for products they never received, police said.

Wittin has been released on conditions and will appear in court in the future.

There may be additional victims or information about Wittin’s alleged fraud that police are not yet aware of, RCMP said.

Wittin was the center of attention a CBC Marketplace report published in May 2023, in which several of his clients learned they had been scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars.

Some of them mentioned Wittin’s appearance on the hit HGTV show Fixer to fantastic in 2022, she was drawn to make a purchase from Seventeen Pools.

Wittin has changed both his personal and business names, Marketplace reports.

Anyone with information about Wittin or his companies – Seventeen Pools, 204 Container Pools and Kustom Container Builders – is asked to contact their local RCMP detachment.