A suspended and retired Toronto lawyer has been charged with fraud and money laundering in the wake of allegations from clients that he kept their money.
CBC Toronto first reported on the allegations against Ping-Teng Tan last summer.
At the time, two of Tan’s clients were waiting for the lawyer to comply with court decisions ordering Tan to pay them more than $1 million they were collectively owed from the sale of a business, in one case, and the sale of a residential property, in the other.
Nine months later those clients still haven’t received a cent.
York Regional Police confirmed the force charged Tan with two counts of fraud over $5,000, two counts of possession of property obtained by a crime and money laundering late last month. Police believe there may be more victims.
The charges have not yet been tested in court.
Tan did not respond to a request for comment for this story on his personal email. His law firm email was shut down last year and the phone number is not in service.
Former client Xiaolong Zhang says he was relieved when an officer informed him Tan was charged with fraud in his case.
“I felt like justice was finally being done,” Zhang said.
Clients out more than $1M after lawyer kept money in real estate, business deals
Zhang and his wife hired Tan at the end of 2023 to handle the sale of their auto parts distribution business in Vaughan, Ont., to fund their retirement. But they never received the $517,000 in proceeds they were owed from the sale — which was paid to a trust account set up by Tan’s law firm — not even after a judge ordered Tan to pay them their money, plus the costs of their legal application, last June.
“Now instead of enjoying our retirement, my wife and I are facing serious financial and emotional stress,” said Zhang. “Like most other people, we had a kind of natural trust in lawyers. That trust is supposed to be the foundation of our legal system.”
While Zhang is grateful to the police, the ongoing fight to recover his retirement money has left him disillusioned with the civil court process and disappointed with a compensation fund for those who’ve lost money because of a lawyer or paralegal’s dishonesty.
“Mr. Tan has no assets under his name we can go after, so now all we can do is wait for compensation from the Law Society of Ontario,” said Zhang. “This long and uncertain wait is incredibly painful — it feels like a second wave of emotional trauma.”
The Law Society of Ontario’s (LSO) compensation fund is funded by fees that lawyers and paralegals pay the professional regulator each year, and it has a $500,000 cap per claim.
Zhang filed a complaint with the LSO in February 2024. Then last April, Tan told the law society he’d retired and closed his practice. That same month, the LSO suspended Tan’s licence, later saying there was a risk of harm to the public.
Tan consented to the suspension but did not admit guilt. He can still contest allegations of misappropriating money he held in trust at a disciplinary hearing.
The LSO confirmed that no disciplinary hearing has been scheduled for Tan, but his licence remains suspended.
The LSO lawyer handling Zhang’s compensation fund claim told him in writing last month that she’d completed her review and submitted her report on his claim last year, but that her report is still under review and so she couldn’t share a timeline for a decision with Zhang.
The message went on to say the entire claim process frequently exceeds two years.
“I cannot wait for more than two years to get the funds,” said Zhang.
In an emailed statement, LSO spokesperson Amy Lewis told CBC Toronto the timing of a grant decision depends on the timeframe in which evidence is obtained and the number of claims received and under review.
The compensation fund granted 75 claims involving lawyers last year, paying out a total of approximately $2.6 million, according to an end-of-year report. The fund also denied 30 claims involving lawyers and received 69 new claims concerning lawyers in 2024.
As Zhang waits for his claim decision, he’s considering selling his house, but he’s struggling with the idea of trusting a lawyer with the sale.
“If I encounter this kind of lawyer again, my life is gone because the house is worth more than double, triple of half million,” Zhang said.
“If someone steals that money, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?”
