Romeo Viens arrested for building an Atom Bomb

QPP Det. Leon Pronovost examines the phony Atom bomb

  In early 1946 Arthur Romeo Viens tossed restlessly on a hospital cot in Montreal.

  Dr. Maxime Brisebois finally decided that the patient's mysterious ailment must be largely mental. 

  Viens, 45, confirmed the diagnosis, telling Dr. Brisebois that he was stricken with debilitating stress over how to proceed with an atom bomb that he had invented and produced.

   Viens then pulled out a $600,000 cheque for his atom bomb invention issued to him by Chrysler Corporation of America. 

Dr. Brisebois

   Viens told Dr. Brisebois that he dare not cash the cheque until he raised $20,000 for patent protection.  

 Viens then showed Brisebois his atomic bomb, a metal device that looked something like a meat grinder. He asked Broisebois for a $20,000 loan in return for $60,000 in profits.

 Brisebois, who was a well-known Montreal doctor from the Rigaud-Vaudreuil suburban area and a familiar voice on radio programs, lent Viens the cash.

  Viens, who had previously been arrested 55 times, then simply disappeared with Brisebois' money.

    Viens, along with at least one accomplice, Jules Boduc, 28, who played the role of a federal inspector, used the ruse on several other victims. Their scam raised somewhere around $150,000 to $500,000 and authorities arrested Viens and Bolduc and slapped them with 14 fraud charges. 

   Viens immediately jumped bail and fled to New York. Police responded by arresting and charging Viens' wife and 17-year-old daughter as accomplices, as a blatant attempt to pressure Viens to return to face charges. 

  Instead Viens was arrested in New York and charged with cashing a forged $300 cheque to buy a watch. The judge sentenced Viens to three and a half years in prison. He remained behind bars in the USA in late 1949, three years after his atomic affair went public in Montreal. 

   Montreal's two major French-language newspapers La Presse and Le Devoir did not report on the affair at all, presumably out of respect to the dignity of Dr. Brisebois, who defended himself from any notions that he was investing in illegal weaponry by saying that he had simply lent money to Brisebois.

   The English papers did not follow up the story and so we know nothing else about Viens' ultimate fate at the hands of Canadian justice, although we know that in '49 his sidekick Bujold was sentenced to two years for his part in the scam.