Mary Jane Taylor, 62, and her partner, Kent Hill, 69, said they could lose their home if they don't start working again after they lost their retirement savings when Montreal-based adviser Earl Jones disappeared last week. (Chad Pawson/CBC)

Two victims of an alleged Ponzi scheme that bilked clients out of money in Ontario and Quebec say they're struggling to cope with the loss of their retirement savings.

Mary Jane Taylor, 62, and her partner, Kent Hill, who live along the St. Lawrence Seaway in Ingleside, Ont., around 100 kilometres southeast of Ottawa, said they began investing with financial adviser Earl Jones a decade ago.

"Earl Jones, in trust – '98, Oct. 8," Taylor said while combing through her files.

Jones is suspected of stealing as much as $50 million from his clients in a Ponzi scheme. The Montreal-based adviser has been missing for a week, and the accounts containing his clients' assets have been drained.

Jones hasn't been charged following the allegations, but Quebec authorities have frozen his accounts and are trying to locate him.

That first cheque, dated Oct. 8, 1998, Taylor said, passed a $20,000 inheritance from her mother over to Jones.

"Before she passed, she told me, 'Take that little bit and go and see Earl, he'll look after you,' because she believed in Earl," Taylor said.

Taylor said Jones paid her at a better monthly interest rate that her bank, so she continued to invest with him.

Taylor said she convinced Hill, 69, to do the same.

Hill said convincing him to invest with Jones wasn't difficult.

"I've known him since he was eight," Hill said. "I played hockey with him. He lived on the same street I lived on."

Together, they've lost $450,000.

"I can't believe it," Hill said. "What people in our life could do something like this?"

The couple are lucky they didn't follow Jones's suggestion to re-mortgage their house and let him invest the money, because now that would also be lost, Taylor said.

Taylor and Hill said that when they gathered with their fellow investors in Montreal on Sunday to hear what police and lawyers had to say about their situation, they met a few people who had gone through with the re-mortgaging plan.

Those people, Hill said, had now probably lost their homes.

Taylor said that because of the money they lost, she and Hill are coming out of retirement and looking for work again.

"We won't have enough to keep the house if I don't get a job," she said.

The couple said that they don't ever expect to get their money back but are hoping that financial regulations will be improved to help keep others from getting burned in similar schemes.