Estimated 5 minutes
The audio model of this text is generated by AI-based know-how. Mispronunciations can happen. We’re working with our companions to repeatedly assessment and enhance the outcomes.
A Toronto man has been charged for allegedly defrauding 28 buyers of $6.6 million they supplied to commerce in overseas alternate.
As an alternative of placing buyers’ funds into particular person buying and selling accounts, the Ontario Securities Fee (OSC) alleges Seyed Mohammad Ali Nojoumi — who goes by Ali Nojoumi — and two different people controlling Good Prime Group used the cash to pay private bills and different buyers. None of them have been registered to promote securities in Ontario.
Nojoumi, 46, was arrested and charged with fraud over $5,000 and possession of proceeds of crime final week after which launched on a $5,000 bail with a surety, based on Ontario Court docket of Justice data.
CBC Toronto first reported on him in April 2024 after a number of the buyers he’s now charged with defrauding sued Nojoumi to attempt to get better their investments. Mina Amini and her husband have been amongst them. The couple invested $310,000 from their financial savings and a mortgage they have been unable to repay, which has since pressured them out of business.
“We attempt to begin once more, however truthfully, it’s so laborious,” stated Amini. “The OSC has helped us quite a bit. With out their assist we might have misplaced our hope.”
These lawsuits, that are nonetheless earlier than the courts, and court docket data alleged that Nojoumi solicited at the least $3.5 million by Good Prime Group whereas going through a fraud cost for a previous alleged funding rip-off.
That cost was laid by Toronto police in February 2019. However practically three years later, the Crown prosecutor agreed to withdraw it after Nojoumi paid again the alleged sufferer, based on emails filed in Ontario’s Superior Court docket of Justice.
The investor lawsuits allege Nojoumi doubtless used their cash to pay that restitution. Court docket data present Amini and her husband invested their $230,000 enterprise mortgage 10 days earlier than Nojoumi made his second restitution fee in December 2021.
After the legal cost was dropped in early 2022, the lawsuits allege Nojoumi went on to defraud one other $6.5 million from buyers in the Toronto space’s Persian neighborhood.
Nojoumi didn’t reply to requests for remark for this story. However in his statements of defence for the lawsuits, he denied all the allegations in opposition to him — together with that he engaged in a fraudulent scheme. As an alternative, his statements of defence say the buyers’ funds have been loans that are not but as a consequence of be repaid.
‘He has to pay all of us’
The legal fees present “a bit little bit of aid” for Ency Rahmani, one other of the 28 buyers whose reporting to the OSC led to the legal fees.
“I cannot be comfortable till I see that full justice is completed,” she stated. “He has to pay all of us. It isn’t solely the amount of cash that we’ve got invested, it is the emotional, the stress that we’ve got gone by … you’ll be able to’t put a greenback quantity on it.”
Rahmani was on maternity go away together with her first little one in 2022 when she invested $13,500 US with Nojoumi for some further monetary help. By the point she found there was an issue in 2023, Rahmani was pregnant together with her second little one and she or he and her husband had signed a contract for a pre-construction house.
“I used to be relying on this cash,” stated Rahmani. “Then, proper on the time, they stated all of the accounts have been frozen: ‘There isn’t any cash. We will not give something again to you.’”
As a outcome, she says they couldn’t afford to shut on their home and misplaced their $90,000 deposit. Rahmani says there should be adjustments to how fraud is policed and prosecuted in Canada to ensure fraudsters pay again their victims and to discourage others.
“We did not transfer and go away behind our household and kin to return right here and endure once more,” she stated. “As a result of we trusted. We stated, ‘OK, Canada is someplace that we are able to obtain justice.’”
CBC Toronto has continued to report extensively on fraud since its investigative sequence The Price of Fraud revealed in 2023 that solely a fraction of fraud circumstances have been making it by Ontario’s justice system.
New numbers from Statistics Canada just lately confirmed the issue has solely gotten worse since then, with most such circumstances in Ontario ending with fees being stayed or withdrawn since 2020.
For Amini, the current legal fees have given her hope that justice can nonetheless be served for buyers like her.
“I want this fraud case will likely be resolved as quickly as attainable and the victims’ cash will likely be returned, and this case will function a transparent lesson so nobody else has to undergo what we’ve got skilled,” she stated.
Nojoumi will likely be again in court docket in Newmarket, Ont., late subsequent month.
Leave a Reply