A Brampton man has been charged with fraud and is facing two lawsuits related to an alleged pre-construction home deposit scam worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Moiz Kunwar, 28, allegedly took real estate deposits from at least nine homebuyers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) for pre-construction houses he didn’t have the right to sell and which were being built by unrelated, legitimate developers.
Janet Campbell is one of them. The Brampton grandmother and six others are collectively suing Kunwar to get back nearly $170,000 they paid him for deposits on pre-construction homes they purchased but never received.
“This hurt me a lot because I believed him, and I trusted him to have a home, and it didn’t happen,” said Campbell. “He took me to this site to see the home, but it wasn’t my home.”
After many delays, Campbell says Kunwar assured her the nearly $1-million five-bedroom Brampton home she’d signed a purchase agreement for in July 2022 would be ready by Jan. 1 of this year, so she told her landlord she’d be moving out. But then her dream home never materialized.
“When I looked at my children, and my grandchildren, and they looked at me and they said, ‘Mom, where are we going to go? What are we going to do?’ What do I tell them?”
Campbell spent her remaining savings on Airbnbs for herself and her family. She recently secured a rental by taking out loans for first and last month’s rent.
Man facing criminal charges, lawsuits over alleged GTA real estate scam
Peel Regional Police charged Kunwar with fraud over $5,000 and possession of property obtained by crime for an alleged fraud linked to real estate in March. The victim who was allegedly defrauded confirmed to CBC that her case involves deposits she paid Kunwar for two pre-construction homes she never received. She is not part of either lawsuit.
The charges against Kunwar have not yet been tested in court.
Kunwar did not respond to CBC requests for comment for this story, but his lawyer filed a statement of defence in response to Campbell’s lawsuit on Friday.
In the court filing, Kunwar denied all allegations of fraud and that he’d ever represented himself as a real estate investor, broker, developer or mortgage lender. Instead, the record says Kunwar was “simply a sales associate” who received some payments on behalf of his superiors and did not deposit them for his own personal use.
The statement of defence does not explain who those superiors are, or what, if any, company they’re associated with.
But it does say that Kunwar believed the transactions were lawful and legitimate and that the time frames he provided for the property developments were based on information he was given by his superiors.
The defence also says Kunwar arranged for Campbell and two of the other plaintiffs to get some of their money back.
Three years ago, a CBC Toronto investigation raised questions about these real estate deals after a local realtor sounded the alarm about a sales pitch with below-market prices and low mortgage rates he said was circulating in Toronto’s Black community.
The offer was for pre-construction homes in developments constructed by Paradise Developments Inc. — a licensed developer building homes in the GTA. The seller marketing the deals had a nearly identical name, Paradise Development Homes Limited (PDHL).
Private lender Empire Finance was supposed to provide the mortgage financing for the deals. Kunwar was listed as the president of that supposed company on a business card, but Empire Finance is not a registered corporation in Ontario, nor a licensed lender or broker.
The builder told CBC it had no connection to or business relationship with the seller and Empire Finance, and that neither company had the right to market or sell Paradise Developments’ homes.
At the time, CBC also spoke to more than 10 other people who said they either gave deposits to Kunwar or others connected with PDHL or Empire Finance, had friends or family who made payments, or who heard the sales pitch in person but didn’t invest.
Some raised concerns about the validity of the deals, while others believed they had legitimately purchased a home, since their closing dates were years away.
In its statement then, Paradise Developments Inc. also said Kunwar had no authority or legal right to sell any of the builder’s properties.
Kunwar told CBC in 2022 that he passed on information about the deals to people he knew but denied taking deposits. At the time, he said he had put down deposits for two homes himself.
Despite having no relationship with the real builder, it appears Kunwar continued to take deposits for pre-construction homes as recently as last year. Three of the homebuyers in Campbell’s lawsuit signed their agreements in 2024.
“More than two years after the fact, this is still happening,” said Andrew Ballantyne, the lawyer representing Campbell and six other homebuyers in the lawsuit.
“One of the clients who I now have signed their purchase agreement in May of last year. So this isn’t something that stopped.”
In an affidavit filed in the other lawsuit against Kunwar, the plaintiff says he organized a meeting with Kunwar after CBC published the story in which Kunwar maintained he had the authority to sell homes and that “Paradise Homes had to tell CBC there was no agreement because it was confidential.”
Kunwar was “extremely persuasive and convincing at this meeting,” and the plaintiff left the meeting trusting that Kunwar was an authorized seller and that his agreements of purchase were legitimate, according to the court filing. The plaintiff’s statement of claim to recover nearly $100,000 in deposits he paid for two properties was filed about two years later, in August 2024.
Norman Groot is representing that homebuyer. The fraud recovery lawyer is trying to get a default judgment against Kunwar, who did not respond to the claim until he attended a virtual court appearance last month asking for more time.
“We have seen this scenario many times,” Groot said.
“Most frauds are a variation of the same sort of play. Obtaining trust, sense of urgency, a little bit of greed on behalf of the victim, lack of due diligence and a combination of factors results in somebody making a decision they wish they never had.”
Campbell hopes by speaking out she can help others avoid trusting offers like the one she got, which might be too good to be true.
“It’s a hard lesson to learn,” she said. “I do want a home, but I’m scared, because now I don’t know if it’s going to be the same thing again. How do I believe somebody or trust somebody now?”
