Did Calgary con artist Anita Koo jump to her death?

CALGARY - A woman who is being hunted around the world after fleeing Calgary with over $9 million from a Bank of Montreal client's account may have committed suicide in Hong Kong, Calgary RCMP confirmed Thursday.

RCMP Commercial Crime Sgt. Phil Tawtel said he was notified about the death of a woman, who might have been Anita Koo, shortly after she reportedly jumped from a balcony in Hong Kong last January 4th.

Anita and her husband, Tony, fled Calgary sometime in June, 2002 after Anita filed a statement of defence in civil court denying that she cleaned out the account of an elderly Mexican man, Salvador E. Casanova.

Casanova claimed that Anita, who worked as a $38,000-per-year clerk at the Bank of Montreal, was consistently sending Casanova original bank certificates assuring him his deposit had grown to over $9 million, while she was systematically siphoning off all his funds.

Casanova won a court order seizing all of the Koo’s assets in Calgary, which included a massive home, several automobiles, a condominium and over 800 bottles of fine wine.

The Mexican man in his late 80s also won a court judgment of $15,480,833.93 covering his losses and costs against Anita, Tony, their son, Jonathan, and Tony’s company called Tony Koo Enterprises Ltd.

Since Anita and Tony disappeared, Sgt. Tawtel said he has been chasing leads all over the globe in the hopes of tracking the pair down.

While the report of the death of the woman in Hong Kong appears to be accurate, the jaded investigator said he is keeping his eyes wide open to the fact the suicide might be a ruse to throw police off the trail.

The Hong Kong Coroner's office sent Tawtel a death report identifying the deceased as Yuk Chun Anita Mac, a name Anita used before immigrating to Canada from Hong Kong. But there was no date of birth or any other reliable information to confirm that was Anita’s body, he said.

As a result, he has requested further investigation by Hong Kong police.

Rumours of the death are rife in Calgary's Chinese community, and Tawtel said he has heard everything from she committed suicide be jumping from a balcony or the top of a building and that she left a suicide note stating guilt drove her to death.

A source told Alberta News that Anita jumped because Tony left her for another woman, a story Tawtel said he hadn’t heard yet.

"We are trying to get 100 per cent confirmation one way or the other, but at this point we are not prepared to say that the person who is deceased is in fact Anita Koo," Tawtel added.