Victims of fatal Toronto shooting blamed for alleged mortgage fraud

Alan Kats felt the justice system failed him by not prosecuting a group of alleged mortgage fraudsters he blamed for scamming his family out of their life savings in an elaborate mortgage scheme.

His widow has identified the 46-year-old father of two as the third fatality in a triple shooting in Toronto that left two of the alleged fraudsters dead.

Alisa Pogorelovsky, said “fear and depression“ engulfed Mr. Kats after the couple lost $1.37-million to a scheme organized by Arash Missaghi, repeatedly identified in court documents as a mortgage fraudster, and a mortgage broker named Samira Yousefi.

“My husband and my family are the victims of a carefully planned scam,” she told The Globe and Mail. “More than half a year ago we made an official report to the police. We hired lawyers, went to court, but no justice was served. As a result, our lives are forever changed, depriving me of a husband and our kids from their father.”

Around 3:35 p.m. on Monday, police say, a man entered a financial business located in the Don Mills neighbourhood, sparking a shooting that left Mr. Missaghi and Ms. Yousefi dead.

While Toronto police have yet to identify the third victim, Ms. Pogorelovsky confirmed it was her husband, who she said took his own life. She provided a note she says was written by Mr. Kats stating his “death is on the hands of” Ms. Yousefi, Mr. Missaghi and two other people allegedly involved in the scheme.

“I need to bury his body and say goodbye now,” said Ms. Pogorelovsky, who says she will continue with litigation against Mr. Missaghi’s alleged associates. “I have two kids to raise on my own with no work, no income, no house, no money.”

Mr. Missaghi was a notorious figure in the mortgage world, repeatedly accused in civil and criminal courts of defrauding millions of dollars from investors using complex lending schemes. Despite holding himself out as a mortgage consultant, Mr. Missaghi was never a licensed mortgage broker or mortgage agent, Russ Courtney, a spokesman for the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario, wrote in an e-mail.

Toronto police targeted one of his alleged deceptions in a 2018 investigation called Project Bridle Path that accused him of a sophisticated series of mortgage frauds involving high-end homes that netted $17-million. He was charged with fraud, conspiracy and uttering a forged document, but never convicted – a pattern in the trail of litigation naming him.

“You will almost never find a final judgment or decision against Mr. Missaghi – this was a very sophisticated litigant who knew how to manipulate the courts to his advantage,” said Peter Smiley, a lawyer who says he represents five to 10 people allegedly victimized by Mr. Missaghi.

“What happened at Missaghi’s offices at Mallard Road yesterday is the culmination of many years of systematic failures by our court system, police forces and bankruptcy system,” Mr. Smiley said, adding that his schemes targeted vulnerable communities, particularly in the Persian diaspora.

Two young lawyers were forced to leave the profession after law-society tribunals reviewed the work they performed for Mr. Missaghi. One of them told the Ontario Law Society Tribunal he worked for Mr. Missaghi out of fear.

“Over the course of his relationship with Missaghi, the lawyer received subtle and, increasingly, not so subtle threats of harm if he failed to do as Missaghi demanded,” reads a 2019 ruling from the Law Society Tribunal Hearing Division. It goes on to say that “Missaghi and his associates have been involved in a long pattern of fraudulent real estate transactions often involving manipulation of power of sale processes to defeat subordinate mortgages.”

Mr. Missaghi, who at times claimed to be a multimillionaire but who had also pleaded bankruptcy, was based in north Toronto and surrounding cities, but the disputed properties he was involved in stretched from New Liskeard in Northern Ontario to office towers in Michigan.

Earlier this year, his string of court successes appeared to be running out. Mr. Missaghi and several of his business associates had their assets frozen by Canadian courts through an extraordinary pre-emptive civil-suit legal power known as a Mareva order.

Court records obtained by The Globe and Mail show this followed a lawsuit brought by Maxol Wealth Investments, a company controlled by Ms. Pogorelovsky and Mr. Kats. Filings in the case describe Ms. Yousefi as “an associate of Missaghi” who “knowingly assisted in carrying out fraud.”

A statement of claim filed in the case says the couple were “unsophisticated investors” when they were introduced to Ms. Yousefi by a friend.

In 2022, Ms. Yousefi helped the couple obtain a home equity line of credit for $1.4-million, according to the court documents, which they used to create Maxol Wealth Investments. Ms. Yousefi allegedly encouraged them to loan out the money through syndicated mortgage deals, where they would invest in several properties she picked while promising them high rates of return that never materialized.

“The mortgages continued to be consistently in default, with Samira making excuses and unfulfilled promises regarding payment,” the court filings say.

The couple say they complained and, in 2023, met with a man introduced as “Arie Astanni.” They later learned he was Mr. Missaghi – and that he controlled the properties and agents they had been using, without giving them any of the promised financial stakes in the assets they thought they had invested in.

“The events that gave rise to the litigation that we are involved in with Missaghi and Yousefi have devastated and now destroyed our family,” Ms. Pogorelovsky said in a text, adding, “I hope that someday my family will be able to recover.”

With a report from Stephanie Chambers