B.C. man sent family member to impersonate him at mandatory ethics course, lied about it to regulator

A person types on a laptop, in Miami on Monday, Dec. 12, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Wilfredo Lee

A B.C. man who asked a family member to impersonate him in an online course about ethics, then lied about it to a provincial regulator, has had his real estate licence cancelled.

Ang “Leon” Li admitted his misconduct and agreed to the sanction in a consent order he proposed to the B.C. Financial Services Authority last month. The document was published on the BCFSA website last week.

According to the consent order, Li was registered to attend a mandatory continuing education course called “Ethics – Building Trust” on May 10, 2023. The course was hosted by the BCFSA and was conducted online via Microsoft Teams.

“During the course, a participant represented themselves to be Mr. Li,” the consent order reads. “BCFSA education staff was concerned that the participant was not Mr. Li. Staff obtained an online photo of Mr. Li that matched his licensing information, and upon examination of the photo, staff remained suspicious that the participant was not, in fact, Mr. Li.”

Asked to confirm their identity, the participant did not do so, according to the consent order. Instead, when staff asked them to call a BCFSA phone number, they claimed their phone was broken, then left the Teams meeting before it was finished.

BCFSA staff attempted to call Li’s phone to confirm his identity during the meeting, but it went to voicemail.

When the regulator followed up with Li later in May 2023, the order notes, he claimed he had attended the course, and attributed the discrepancy between his appearance on the Teams call and his appearance in photographs to “allergies, lack of sleep, and sickness.”

The BCFSA was unconvinced, and concluded that Li had arranged for someone to impersonate him. The regulator made a finding of academic misconduct, and Li was suspended and unenrolled from the course without credit.

After his suspension was lifted, Li completed the requisite courses. His licence was renewed in late September 2023, according to the consent order.

Internally, the BCFSA referred the matter to its compliance and enforcement department, which followed up with Li in November 2024.

Again, Li maintained that it was he who had attended the Teams meeting. This time, the document indicates, he claimed that the power at his home had gone out around the time the BCFSA staff asked him to confirm his identity.

He also repeated his claim that he was sick and told the regulator that—after learning he was under investigation for academic misconduct—he “felt compelled to cancel a flight to attend his grandfather’s funeral.”

Li told the BCFSA he had “suffered guilt for not attending, which suffering and regret may last the rest of his life,” and expressed shock that he was being investigated again for the same alleged misconduct that he felt he should not have been disciplined for the first time.

The regulator responded by asking for documentation to corroborate Li’s claims, including information from an electrician regarding the power outage, phone records, documentation of his cancelled flight and his grandfather’s death certificate.

Li provided some of the requested documentation and claimed to be unable to provide other elements of it. When the BCFSA issued him a “non-compliance warning letter,” he changed his story and confessed that he had not, in fact, attended the course, according to the consent order.

In the document, Li admitted that he asked a family member to attend the course in his place, and that this amounted to conduct unbecoming of a licensee. He also admitted that he made false or misleading statements to the regulator and failed to co-operate with the investigation, both of which constituted professional misconduct under the Real Estate Services Act.

Under the consent order, Li agreed to have his licence cancelled, as well as to pay the BCFSA $4,150 in “enforcement expenses.”