A couple of lawyers from Toronto de Vida Luxurosa faces criminal charges after more than $ 7 million in customer money were embezzled of their company’s trust accounts, much of them channeled to spend on fashion and luxury decoration.
The Toronto Police announced Thursday afternoon that Singa Bui, 42, who practiced the real estate law, has been accused of 42 charges that include 24 of fraud more than $ 5,000, 17 cases of trusted criminal breach and a position of possession of earnings of crimes exceeding $ 5,000.
Her husband and legal partner, Nicholas Cartel, 61, whose legal practice focused on litigation and class actions, was accused of a fraud charge of more than $ 5,000.
Neither Bui nor a lawyer who represented her immediately responded to the request for comments by email of CBC on Friday.
Reached by phone, Cartel told CBC that he will fight in his position vigorously, calling him without foundation and “a trick” to provide evidence against his wife.
“There is no evidence of my participation at all,” he said.
He said that no one has told him what his fraud position is specifically related: who is the alleged victim or victims and what, exactly, is alleged that he has done wrong.
“There is no information at all. Absolute zero.”
Appropriate home sales money
Nancy Marsilla said “it’s time” to appear the charges. A former client of the firm, Marsilla, says he is out of $ 220,000 that Bui’s law firm and poster had been clinging after the sale of her house in 2021 while she resolved her divorce.
“It is devastating to know that someone in such a position of power and responsibility allegedly chose to manipulate and disappoint the same clients who were hired to protect,” he told CBC on Friday. “There must be stronger safeguards to protect people who browse the main legal and financial transactions.”
The couple directed a boutique company called Cartel & Bui LLP of an elegantly decorated office in the West End de Toronto, until several real estate clients began to complain that the money was going to disappear during housing sales and purchases.
As of September 2023, in a half dozen housing sales in southern Ontario, the company handled, cartel and Bui did not pay the mortgages of the vendors as supposed, according to the records submitted in civil demands. Instead, he took the money from the buyers and paid the domestic capital to his client sellers, but clung to the rest, according to the records.
Perhaps in the worst alleged embezzlement, some housing buyers who had agreed to acquire a house in Toronto sent more than $ 2 million to Cartel & Bui LLP in November towards the purchase. But in a matter of days, most funds disappeared from the company’s trust account. The agreement never closed and housing buyers have not regained their money.
Cartel, BUI and his firm face more than 15 demands. In the course of these procedures, Bui admitted in an affidavit in November that he began stealing money from the clients of the company’s fiduciary account since 2014.
She said that she initially took smaller amounts “to reach the end of the month”, but finally embezzled tens of thousands of dollars at the same time to finance “luxurious vacations”, fine meals, registration of private school for their children and “elegant furniture and expensive art.”
Because his statement was forced by the order of a judge, it cannot be used against him to support a criminal prosecution.
In multiple interviews with CBC News and their judicial presentations, poster has always firmly denied having some hand in the theft of customer funds, and has repeatedly blamed his wife, who, according to him, managed the finances of his company and his home. Neither Bui nor his lawyers have responded to multiple requests for CBC comments during the last year.
Police raided his home from Midtown Toronto in December and took more than 1,000 articles of high fashion and furniture, including designer dresses, footwear, costumes, hats, ties and works of art.
Both lawyers were also provisionally suspended from practicing the law in May last year, while the Ontario Law Society investigates.
Since then, the Law Society has presented disciplinary positions against BUI but not on the poster.
The couple has already turned a few weeks in jail, after both were found in contempt of the court last fall in civil procedures against them.
There are no details about criminal accusations
The announcement of the police on Thursday about the criminal charges against BUI and cartel does not specify who are the alleged victims or any other detail about the alleged criminal acts.
But in a court application to obtain an order to search for the couple’s house in December, the investigators said that 20 people communicated with them between December 2023 and May 2024 to file criminal complaints with respect to Cartel & Bui LLP. That same document names more than 40 people more banks and insurance companies as possible “victims.”
“The evidence discovered to date justifies the belief that Cartel & Bui LLP lawyers had been functionally using the company’s real estate trust account as a personal/commercial accreditation line, illegally based on the trust account to finance a series of personal and commercial expenses with little by little, which does not deal with the funds on how those funds would be represented,” says the police application.
