My Daughter Sent Me To Prison For 22 Months Because Of Her Husband’s Scheme. The Day I’m Released…

The Day My World Collapsed

The day I walked out of that courtroom a free man would be the day my daughter lost everything she’d stolen from me. I took a deep breath of the cold Vancouver air, watching the rain streak down the window of my lawyer’s office.

Twenty-two months; that’s how long they’d kept me locked away for a crime I didn’t commit. Twenty-two months of concrete walls, fluorescent lights, and the bitter taste of betrayal that never quite left my mouth.

My name is Richard Holloway, and I’m 63 years old. For 40 years, I built Holloway Marine Supply from nothing into one of the most respected maritime equipment suppliers in British Columbia.

My late wife Catherine and I had poured everything into that business. When she passed five years ago from cancer, I threw myself even deeper into the work.

It was all I had left aside from our daughter, Rebecca. Even now, saying her name feels like swallowing glass.

Let me take you back to where this nightmare began. It was a Tuesday morning in March 2022.

I remember because the cherry blossoms were just starting to bloom along my street in Kitsilano. I’d arrived at the office early, as always, to review our quarterly reports.

We’d just secured a major contract with the Canadian Coast Guard for $6 million. It was the culmination of two years of negotiations.

Rebecca had been my CFO for the past eight years. She was brilliant with numbers, had an MBA from UBC, and I’d been so proud when she joined the family business.

Her husband, Derek Chen, worked as a consultant for various tech startups. He was a nice enough guy, or so I thought.

They’d been married for four years and had a daughter, my granddaughter Emma, who was six years old at the time. That morning, Rebecca walked into my office with Derek and two RCMP officers.

“Dad, we need to talk,” she said, her voice flat and cold in a way I’d never heard before.

The officers informed me I was under investigation for embezzling $850,000 from Holloway Marine Supply. They had bank statements showing transfers to an offshore account in my name.

They had forged invoices from suppliers that didn’t exist. They had emails with my digital signature authorizing fraudulent payments.

I couldn’t breathe.

“This is insane. Rebecca, tell them you handle all the accounts. You know I would never—”

“That’s exactly why this is so painful, Dad,” she interrupted, and I swear to God there were actual tears in her eyes.

“I discovered the discrepancies three weeks ago. I’ve been working with our auditors, hoping there was some mistake, but the evidence is overwhelming. You’ve been systematically stealing from your own company for the past two years.”

“That’s a lie!” I shouted, but the officers were already reading me my rights.

Derek put his arm around Rebecca’s shoulders.

“Sir, I know this is difficult, but we have a responsibility to Emma. We can’t have her grandfather be a thief.”

They arrested me that day. The bail hearing was a disaster.

The crown argued I was a flight risk with access to offshore funds. My lawyer at the time, a corporate attorney named Paul Morrison who’d handled our business contracts for years, seemed completely out of his depth in criminal court.

Bail was set at $500,000. Here’s where it got truly diabolical.

My assets were frozen pending investigation. This included the company accounts, my personal accounts, and even the joint account I’d shared with Catherine that still had her name on it.

The only way to make bail was for Rebecca to authorize a loan against the company. She could do this as CFO with her 40% ownership, but she refused.

“I’m sorry, Dad, but I have to think about Emma’s future. If you’re innocent, the trial will prove it. Until then, I can’t risk the company’s financial stability.”

So, I sat in pre-trial detention at the North Fraser Pre-Trial Center for four months before the trial even began. Paul Morrison was replaced by a public defender named Jennifer Walsh, a young woman fresh out of law school who was handling her third criminal case.

She meant well, but she was drowning. The trial lasted three weeks.

The prosecution laid out their case meticulously. They showed bank records showing transfers to an account in the Cayman Islands under my name.

They presented invoices from companies like Pacific Marine Distributors and Coastal Equipment Solutions that investigation proved had never existed. They showed email chains where I supposedly authorized payments to these ghost companies, all with my digital signature which our IT department confirmed came from my computer.

Rebecca testified and walked the jury through the company’s financial structure. She explained how she’d noticed irregularities during a routine audit and how she’d confronted me privately and I denied everything.

She claimed she had no choice but to go to the authorities.

“I loved my father,” she said on the stand, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

“But I love my daughter more. I couldn’t let her grow up thinking that theft and fraud were acceptable just because it was family.”

Derek testified too. He talked about how I’d become distant after Catherine’s death.

He claimed I’d made comments about feeling like I’d worked my whole life and deserved to enjoy some of that money. He said I’d asked him about cryptocurrency and offshore investment strategies.

These were all lies, but they were delivered with such conviction that I could see the jury believing him. The defense tried, and Jennifer brought in a handwriting expert who said some of the signatures looked potentially inconsistent but couldn’t definitively prove forgery.

We couldn’t afford a digital forensics expert to examine the emails. We had no investigators to track down where the money actually went.

I testified in my own defense. I explained that I had no knowledge of these transactions and that Rebecca had full access to all company accounts.

I told them I’d never even set up an offshore account. But without concrete proof or evidence to counter their mountain of documentation, I just looked like a guilty man making excuses.

The jury deliberated for six hours. I was found guilty on 12 counts of fraud and embezzlement.

The judge sentenced me to three years with credit for time served. I had 26 months remaining.

They sent me to William Head Institution, a medium-security facility on Vancouver Island. I’d built a company worth $20 million, and now I was sleeping on a thin mattress in a 6×8 ft cell.

I spent my nights listening to the sound of the ocean that had once represented freedom and opportunity. The first few months were the worst.

Rebecca sent me one letter. It said she hoped I would use this time to reflect on what I’d done to find some peace and that she would bring Emma to visit once I was ready to admit my guilt and apologize.

I wrote back one sentence: “I am innocent and one day I will prove it.” She never contacted me again.

The Silent War Behind Concrete Walls

But here’s what Rebecca and Derek didn’t know. William Head has an education program, and in that program, I met a man named Tom Nakamura.

Tom was 68, serving the last year of a seven-year sentence for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme. Before his conviction, Tom had been a forensic accountant for the RCMP.

He’d made one terrible mistake near the end of his career because he got greedy, and it cost him everything. Tom and I were assigned to the same woodworking class and we got to talking.

When I told him my story, something shifted in his expression.

“Richard,” he said quietly one afternoon as we sanded table legs.

“Everything you’re describing sounds wrong. The offshore account, the ghost companies, the email trail—it’s too clean.”

“Real embezzlement is messy. People get greedy, they make mistakes, and they leave gaps. This sounds like someone who knows exactly how investigations work set you up.”

“My daughter is a CFO, not a criminal mastermind,” I said bitterly.

“Maybe not, but her husband is a tech consultant. Does he know anything about digital security?”

I thought about it. Derek had actually helped us upgrade our company’s email system two years ago.

He’d said it would improve efficiency and security. I’d given him administrative access to implement the changes.