A Toronto lawyer couple who lived a life of multimillion-dollar homes and high fashion are under investigation for fraud, possession of the proceeds of crime and laundering the proceeds of crime, after more than $7 million of their clients’ money was stolen and funnelled into many of those luxury purchases.
In the first public sign that police are taking concrete steps to investigate lawyers Singa Bui and Nicholas Cartel, officers executed a search warrant at the couple’s midtown home in December and carted away hundreds of designer goods in a cube truck.
A list of items police seized, filed in court earlier this year and obtained by CBC News, includes 58 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes, 52 clothing items from designer label Alexander McQueen, 16 pairs of Christian Louboutin footwear, ties and other accessories from Hermes, and more than 20 accessories and pairs of shoes from Chanel.
CBC’s own research suggests the 1,153 items on the list could range in value from $150 for sandals to potentially more than $10,000 for an Oscar de la Renta jumpsuit, and may altogether be worth more than a million dollars.
Bui, a real estate lawyer and managing partner at Cartel & Bui LLP, has already admitted in a civil court affidavit that she started pilfering client money from the firm’s trust account as far back as 2014.
She said she initially took smaller amounts “to make ends meet” but eventually embezzled tens of thousands of dollars at a time to fund “luxurious vacations,” fine dining, private-school tuition for their children and “elegant furnishings and expensive art.”
She said in the sworn statement she had a shopping compulsion “as a coping mechanism for other stressors in my life including my family and my practice.”
Because her statement was compelled by a judge’s order, it can’t be used against her to support a criminal prosecution.
Cartel, who focused on class actions and litigation, strongly denies having any hand in the misappropriation of client funds, and has repeatedly blamed his wife, who he says managed both their firm’s and their household’s finances.
“There’s no chance, absolutely no chance, that I’m implicated in this,” Cartel told CBC News this week. He said police have not questioned nor even contacted him.
In its application to get the search warrant for the couple’s home, Toronto police’s fraud squad said it needed to seize the luxury items because credit card and bank records allegedly showed they were paid for with funds stolen from the law firm’s clients — and thus the items could be evidence of laundering and possession of proceeds obtained by crime.
“Preliminary financial records for Nicholas Cartel, Singa Bui and Cartel & Bui LLP…. indicate that Singa Bui and/or Nicholas Cartel had been living well beyond their means — including expenses well beyond what could be supported by their lawful income — and had resorted to embezzling funds from the firm’s trust account to support their spending,” says the police document filed in court.
“When questioned or confronted about the firm’s apparent failure to disburse funds appropriately, Singa Bui and/or Nicholas Cartel repeatedly and willfully misled their clients (and other persons) as to what had really occurred to their funds.”
Anthony Ingarra, who along with family and friends lost $410,000 when Cartel & Bui LLP failed to transfer them the proceeds from some private mortgage loans they had made, told CBC the value of the luxury goods seized by police is “just a splash in the pan for what’s actually owing to the victims.”
Police and other court records put that figure at north of $7 million.
Ingarra’s family and friends are among the 20 people who contacted police between December 2023 and May 2024 to file criminal complaints, according to the search warrant records. He and his family and friends also sued Bui, Cartel and their firm and have a default judgment for $459,000 against Bui.
Other victims have obtained default court judgments against Cartel and the law firm totalling nearly $5 million.
Most of the victims were homebuyers or sellers who used Bui as their lawyer to close the sale and handle the money transfer.
The case has underscored how anyone buying or selling a home — typically the most expensive transaction of a person’s life — can be vulnerable to fraud by the very lawyers required by statute in some provinces to handle the transaction, with scant guarantees of any protection.
“It makes me sick to my stomach,” said Ingarra, who is himself a registered mortgage agent, last week. “You’re literally stealing and taking advantage of innocent people that are trusting you on really a simple transaction, but one of the biggest ones in their lives.”
Both lawyers have been provisionally suspended by the Law Society of Ontario since April 2024 pending its probe of their conduct.
In Bui’s case, the LSO then filed a disciplinary notice against her in March alleging 13 instances of misappropriation of client funds and one count of failing to act with integrity and failing to encourage respect for the administration of justice.
The latter count stems from Bui being found in contempt of court and subsequently jailed for 20 days for disregarding multiple orders from a judge in the civil cases to turn over records and answer questions about what she had done with the embezzled money.
No disciplinary action has yet been filed against Cartel, who told CBC this week he will push to get his law licence reinstated and the Law Society’s preliminary findings against him dismissed.
He, too, was found in contempt of court in the same case last fall and jailed for 30 days, but says he plans to appeal that as well, citing records he obtained since then that he claims show he did nothing wrong.
Generally, the Law Society of Ontario’s presumptive punishment for a lawyer who misappropriates client money is to disbar them, as a recent disciplinary ruling noted.
