Saturday, February 23, 2013

Pigeon King trial begins Nov. 4


Arlan Galbraith, the self-proclaimed Pigeon King, insists he will be defending himself without a lawyer when his jury trial begins in a new Kitchener courthouse Nov. 4.

He faces fraud charges after he declared bankruptcy for his Pigeon King International Inc. business in 2008. Investors later pushed him into personal bankruptcy.

He developed a business of selling breeding pairs of pigeons at inflated prices, but promising to buy offspring at prices that would make investors rich.

The business began to unravel when state officials in Iowa barred him from doing business there on the basis that his setup was a Ponzi scheme, meaning it could only survive as long as he could find new investors whose money was used to pay existing investors.

There were about $20 million worth of long-term contracts when Galbraith put the company into bankruptcy.

Galbraith insists there would be a steady stream of revenue when he built and operated pigeon-processing plants to market the birds as meat.

Facilities have been set aside for six to eight weeks for the trial.