A police officer talks with a man outside the scene of a deadly shooting at an office building in the Don Mills neighborhood of Toronto, on June 17.Cole Burston/Reuters
The Law Society of Ontario has suspended the licence of a veteran real estate lawyer in connection with work he did for Arash Missaghi, an accused fraudster who was gunned down in Toronto by one of his alleged victims.
Frederick Allen Yack consented to an interim licence suspension on Wednesday, according to Law Society documents provided to The Globe and Mail. The initial Law Society motion seeking Mr. Yack’s suspension alleged that allowing him to continue to practise could present significant risk of harm to the public, given evidence that he mishandled funds and may have participated in fraud and dishonesty in dealings with Mr. Missaghi.
In an e-mail, Law Society spokesperson Amy Lewis said that Mr. Yack remains licensed, but the order means that he is not permitted to practise law or provide legal services until there is a final decision in his case.
Last month, the Law Society launched hearings seeking interim licence suspensions for Mr. Yack and Shahryar Mazaheri, another lawyer who worked for Mr. Missaghi. Mr. Mazaheri faces allegations that he knowingly failed to prevent dishonesty, fraud, crime or illegal conduct, among other accusations, according to Law Society records. He also appeared before the Law Society tribunal this week.
Mr. Yack, Mr. Mazaheri and their lawyers did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Mr. Mazaheri’s lawyer has previously denied wrongdoing in an e-mail to The Globe.
The Law Society has been facing scrutiny since Mr. Missaghi’s death revealed decades of suspected mortgage fraud and a string of lawyers who worked with him.
Though five lawyers were disciplined for assisting Mr. Missaghi, a Globe investigation discovered that he easily found new ones to work with, raising questions about the Law Society’s ability to warn its members about risky clients and to protect the public.
Days after The Globe published a story about lawyers tied to Mr. Missaghi, the Law Society announced suspension proceedings against Mr. Yack and Mr. Mazaheri.
Alan Kats – the man who shot and killed Mr. Missaghi and his associate, Samira Yousefi, before turning the gun on himself in June – filed a complaint against both lawyers earlier this year. In his suicide note, Mr. Kats blamed Mr. Missaghi, Ms. Yousefi, Mr. Yack and Mr. Mazaheri for his death.
Documents filed in the Law Society proceedings show that Mr. Yack worked closely with Mr. Missaghi for a number of years and the two appeared to have an amicable relationship. In interviews with Law Society investigators, Mr. Yack spoke fondly of Mr. Missaghi and remembered the deceased as a “nice guy” with a “bad reputation,” according to transcripts included in those documents.
“I enjoyed working with him,” he said in one interview. “I found him very intelligent, very nice to deal with.”
Over the course of his interviews, the documents show, Mr. Yack’s account of his involvement with Mr. Kats and his wife, Alisa Pogorelovsky, changed. In an early interview with the Law Society, Mr. Yack denied giving mortgage investment advice to Ms. Pogorelovsky – which would be an apparent conflict of interest given that Mr. Yack also represented Ms. Yousefi, the one encouraging Ms. Pogorelovsky and her husband to invest in a fraudulent mortgage scheme.
Mr. Kats and his wife ultimately lost more than $1.2-million in life savings.
The documents reveal additional complaints against Mr. Yack, on top of the one filed by Ms. Pogorelovsky and her husband. One complainant with ties to Mr. Missaghi raised concerns with the Law Society that a deposit worth more than $126,000 that he and another investor paid to Mr. Yack, in trust, had not been returned to them, despite the transaction failing to close.
In October, 2023, Mr. Yack wrote to Mr. Missaghi expressing concern that the funds had not been returned to his trust account. “It is a scary situation and I feel that I am drowning,” he said in one e-mail, and asked Mr. Missaghi to give him peace of mind.
“As I have stated in the past, now is not the time to have to defend another Law Society Claim dealing with Breach of Trust,” his e-mail to Mr. Missaghi continued. “I really need your best effort to get this problem resolved immediately.”
At a hearing for Mr. Mazaheri on Wednesday, his lawyer Samara Secter also criticized the Law Society for rushing the investigation since Mr. Missaghi’s death after taking its time to investigate the initial complaints.
“The complainant came forward in January. Ms. Yousefi was alive. Mr. Kats was alive. Mr. Missaghi was alive. There was ample time for the Law Society to collect evidence,” she said.
On Wednesday, Ms. Secter asked to dismiss the Law Society’s claim for Mr. Mazaheri’s interim suspension on basis of procedural fairness. The Law Society will be considering the evidence in her claim and postponed Mr. Mazaheri’s next hearing to Sept. 16.