But Riback, 50, has serious problems of his own as he faces extortion and fraud charges in a case that alleges "The Cleaner" tried to clean out the bank accounts of people he was supposed to help.

The charges are part of a Montreal police investigation that led to Riback's arrest in January. He was released on a promise to appear in court yesterday. He appeared briefly before a judge at the Montreal courthouse, when March 17 was set as the next hearing date in the case.

The Gazette has learned the charges stem from Riback's work. He claims to be a highly successful "therapist and a counsellor" to gambling addicts. The services are offered through a company called the Riback Group, based out of an apartment in Côte St. Luc.

One service offered by Riback's company is a claim that he can make "financial arrangements with 'loan sharks' " while helping gamblers with their addiction.

Two of the four charges against Riback allege that, during a period of five months last year, he used extortion and defrauded the relatives of a 76-year-old woman he was hired to help by claiming she owed large sums of money to a loan shark who would harm her if they didn't settle the debt he claimed she had.

Two other charges involve a man from whom Riback is alleged to have extorted money in 2008 and then used intimidation to prevent him from filing a complaint with police.

Riback said yesterday he had no comment on the charges.

Riback once ran a successful textile company on Chabanel St. He is the son of a lawyer and the brother of a Hollywood producer and, according to a promotional video posted on YouTube, "grew up in a great and middle-class family in Montreal."

By his admission, in an interview with The Gazette last year, he ruined his personal life through more than two decades of gambling. In the interview, Riback claimed he could help problem gamblers because he was one of them. He described gambling addicts as "liars, cheaters, storytellers, fraudsters. It's all about instant gratification."

A close look at his life over the past decade reveals that much of what Riback touched turned to ruin.

According to court records, he filed for personal bankruptcy in 1999. Despite that setback, in 2003 he launched a line of sportswear tied in with the popular reality television show Canadian Idol.

The sportswear was manufactured by a company Riback owned called Kidd 2000 and was distributed across Canada through Walmart. But three years after the launch, Kidd 2000 went out of business. This was followed by lawsuits filed by Montreal businessmen who alleged they lost money after lending funds to Riback on false pretenses.

According to a Jan. 12 Superior Court judgment in one of the lawsuits, Riback admitted, through his testimony, that he and an accountant ran "a mini-Ponzi scheme" to finance Kidd 2000. (The accountant has denied this.)

In 2006, Riback and the accountant had a falling out. Riback was charged with threatening the man and a year later was acquitted after agreeing to keep the peace and not be within 100 metres of the accountant or his family.

After Kidd 2000's failure, Riback created the Riback Group and began a campaign of self-promotion. His website - www.theribackgroup.com - boasts of a 97-per-cent success rate in helping gambling addicts through seminars and private counselling.

In 2007, Riback arranged to host a weekly radio show about the evils of gambling on Team 990 and the now-defunct 940 News. But his broadcasting career faltered quickly.

According to documents filed in a lawsuit, Riback did only one show on Team 990 and it did not go very well. A document filed by the station - to explain why Riback's show was cancelled - stated he showed up for the first show, on Aug. 27, 2007, and "proved to be unreasonable and burdensome to work with" while making unreasonable demands to personnel. Another problem was his "inability to properly speak in front of a microphone."

Riback moved his show to 940 News but that also was short-lived.