A B.C. landlord has been fined $7,700 for making multiple misleading statements during dispute resolution hearings before arbitrators from the province’s Residential Tenancy Branch. The RTB’s Compliance and Enforcement Unit imposed the administrative monetary penalties on Ae Ja (Gloria) Shin last month, and a redacted version of the decision was published online last week. The penalties stem from a trio of RTB proceedings involving Shin that occurred in May, June and September 2024, but they can be traced back to a tenancy that ended in January 2022, according to the decision. Tenant 1 and Tenant 2 The document indicates that the tenants who moved out that month—identified as “M.A. and A.I.” and referred to throughout the decision as “Tenant 1”—secured two RTB monetary orders against Shin after leaving the property. The first order was for $486.66 and stemmed from an allegation that Shin had failed to give Tenant 1 access to the rental unit for four days at the beginning of the tenancy. The second order involved the return of Tenant 1’s damage and pet deposits. The RTB ordered Shin to pay the tenants $5,900. According to the CEU decision, Shin did not pay either amount. Tenant 1 took steps to enforce the orders through provincial court, serving Shin with the orders and demand letters with payment instructions, before proceeding to summonses for payment hearings. The decision indicates that Shin was arrested multiple times for failing to appear in court, and did not make payments by court-established deadlines, despite being served with the orders establishing them. Eventually, Tenant 1 secured a garnishing order that required Shin’s new tenant—identified as “A.A. and M.V.” and referred to as “Tenant 2” in the decision—to pay rent to the court, rather than to Shin. When Tenant 2 did so, paying the court $2,958 on May 2, 2024, Shin issued a 10-day notice to end tenancy for non-payment of rent the same day. The CEU decision indicates Shin was aware of the garnishing order before that date, and that the tenants provided a copy of it to her in response to her eviction notice. Nevertheless, on May 21, 2024, Shin submitted a “direct request” to the RTB seeking an order of possession and a monetary award for unpaid rent against Tenant 2. In support of her application, which proceeded without a hearing, Shin submitted a variety of documents, including the 10-day eviction notice, a copy of the lease and various forms. She did not include the garnishing order, according to the CEU decision. Based on the information provided, the RTB arbitrator granted the orders Shin was seeking. Tenant 2 applied for review consideration almost immediately, submitting a copy of the garnishing order and receipts for their rent payment to the court. “On May 31, 2024, a review consideration was granted on the basis that the order of possession and monetary order may have been obtained by fraud, and the original orders were suspended pending a hearing,” the decision reads. At the hearing, Shin told the RTB arbitrator she had only learned of the garnishing order when Tenant 2 presented it to her, according to the decision. The tenant, meanwhile, argued Shin had been compelled to attend court in her dispute with Tenant 1 and clearly knew there were enforcement proceedings against her. The arbitrator cancelled the orders against Tenant 2 and “expressly cautioned” Shin against attempting to rely on or enforce them in future RTB proceedings. Despite this, the CEU decision indicates, Shin submitted the cancelled orders to the RTB in her evidence package for another matter in September 2024. Investigation and penalties The RTB Compliance Enforcement Unit began investigating Shin after receiving an “internal complaint” from a manager in the branch’s dispute resolution services section. Initially, the sole allegation was that Shin had made a false or misleading statement when initiating the May 21 direct request. Subsequent allegations were added following preliminary inquiries by investigators, according to the CEU decision. In the document, Scott McGregor—the RTB’s director of compliance and enforcement—concludes that Shin’s explanations for her conduct, as provided in interviews and written statements to investigators, lacked credibility. “Given the extent of court involvement and repeated enforcement action, I find it implausible that the respondent lacked awareness of the garnishment proceedings,” McGregor’s decision reads. “I find that she was, at minimum, actually aware of those proceedings, and in any event, clearly ought to have been aware of them. I have considered the respondent’s submissions and do not accept them. The statements are inconsistent with extensive court proceedings, repeated service, arrest history and the May 2, 2024, communication.” McGregor deemed the initial issue—Shin’s pursuit of orders enforcing the 10-day eviction notice while omitting the garnishing order—to be the most serious. “I reject the respondent’s explanation that the omission was inadvertent or due to misunderstanding,” the decision reads. “Given the surrounding circumstances, including her decision to proceed with eviction immediately after being advised of the garnishment, I find that the omission was knowing and deliberate.” McGregor ordered Shin to pay an administrative monetary penalty of $3,600 to resolve the matter. In the June review consideration hearing, McGregor concluded, Shin misrepresented when she knew about the garnishing order, but this misrepresentation created less risk because it happened during a hearing when Tenant 2 was present and could provide their own evidence. In the September hearing, Shin’s misrepresentation was limited to submitting cancelled orders as evidence, but she did not rely on or even discuss that evidence during the hearing, making this case “meaningfully less serious than the first two,” according to McGregor’s decision. He ordered penalties of $2,700 for the June incident and $1,400 for the September one, for a total of $7,700. Shin has until Aug. 10 to pay the penalties, request their reconsideration or propose an alternative resolution to her misconduct, according to the decision. “The respondent’s conduct reflects a progression of deliberate omission, misrepresentation, and continued reliance on inaccurate information across distinct proceedings over time,” the decision reads, in its section concluding that monetary penalties are necessary. “It also created a real risk of wrongful eviction and financial prejudice to the tenant. This conduct undermines the integrity of the dispute resolution process.”
