Lawyer guilty of additional count in mortgage scam

BRAMPTON, Ont. - A former lawyer convicted of fraud in a multi-million dollar mortgage scheme pleaded guilty on Wednesday to an additional charge at his sentencing hearing.

Vishnu (Joey) Rajendra Poonai, 55, will now be sentenced on April 26 on five counts of fraud over $5,000 in the sale of 18 different homes between April 2002 and May 2003.

In each instance, a home would be sold and then in some cases, within minutes, the same house would be resold for an inflated price.

The Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Scotia Bank, Royal Bank and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. lost some $3 million when they were left holding the inflated mortgage bag.

The scheme involved flipping properties in communities across Ontario, including Toronto, Hamilton, Brantford, Burlington, Port Colborne, Welland, Kitchener, Chatham, St. Thomas, Meaford, Kirkland Lake and Alfred Lefebvre Township.

On Wednesday, court heard that Poonai was the lawyer of record in the sale of a home in Lanark Highlands that was purchased under the name of a man whose identity was stolen.

The property turned out to be a vacant lot.

In all, court heard there were three victims of identity theft involved in the 18 homes.

Poonai's defence lawyer, Vanessa Christie, read several letters in court from family and friends who called the 55-year-old Brampton, Ont., man a selfless person who now suffers from severe depression.

Christie told Justice John Murray that Poonai did not live an extravagant life but, rather, paid for many of his nieces and nephews to attend university.

Court also heard that Poonai had agreed to his disbarrment from the Law Society of Upper Canada without a hearing. That process was completed Wednesday.

The defence requested Poonai receive two years house arrest.

Although Christie prefaced the remark by saying she wasn't laying blame on the banks involved, she suggested the fraudulent transactions should have set off alarms bells with the banks long before they did.

She reiterated that Mr. Poonai was truly the guilty one and that he is showing remorse for his crimes.

The Crown asked for a three-to-five-year sentence to be served in a federal penitentiary.