Toronto police officers investigate after three adults died in the lobby of an office space in Toronto, on June 17.Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press
Arash Missaghi, an accused serial fraudster gunned down in his office this summer, died controlling a murky web of companies and an undefined pool of assets without leaving a will or instructions on what would happen to his holdings, his lawyer says.
Frederick Yack told investigators with the Law Society of Ontario that he worked for Mr. Missaghi on about 200 files over nearly a decade and knew of several companies controlled by his client.
“I don’t know whether anything is in his name,” Mr. Yack said in one of several interviews this summer with investigators who were preparing disciplinary proceedings against him.
“Most of the information is in Arash’s head,” the lawyer said.
Transcripts of Mr. Yack’s interviews with the Law Society investigators are among more than 1,200 pages of documents now released by a regulatory tribunal as part of professional misconduct hearings scheduled to conclude later this week.
Mr. Yack is accused of assisting in Mr. Missaghi’s frauds. In August, the Law Society began an expedited effort to have him and another Missaghi lawyer, Shahryar Mazaheri, immediately banned or restricted from practising law on an interim basis, arguing that allowing them to continue could amount to “significant risk of harm to members of the public.”
Mr. Missaghi and Samira Yousefi were shot and killed in their Toronto office in June. Alan Kats, a client of Mr. Missaghi’s who claimed he was defrauded by him in a mortgage scheme, was also found dead. Mr. Kats’s wife said he left behind a suicide note saying that he blamed Mr. Missaghi, Ms. Yousefi and the two lawyers for ruining him.
Mr. Missaghi has been named in dozens of lawsuits and was the subject of at least three major police investigations. His fraudulent schemes are estimated by some lawyers to have netted more than $100-million, but he was never convicted, nor was he held accountable in civil courts.
Mr. Missaghi was an undischarged bankrupt who could not legally hold significant assets or serve as a director of any Ontario company. Mr. Yack told Law Society investigators that Mr. Missaghi operated as a “consultant,” often working through intermediaries who nominally ran his companies. Ms. Yousefi was one of them and worked as the head of a mortgage broker consultancy that was located at Mr. Missaghi’s office.
Mr. Yack told the Law Society investigators that Mr. Missaghi’s wife, Leila Alizadeh, and his business associate, Troy Wilson, would be the most likely to know details about where exactly Mr. Missaghi placed his money and properties. (Lawyers representing Mr. Wilson and Ms. Alizadeh did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
“The way I see it, the wife is now the one who will be in control of all those assets,” Mr. Yack said. He told the Law Society that after the shootings, Mr. Wilson told him he “wants to see everything” in relation to corporations once controlled by Mr. Missaghi.
Arash Missaghi's passport photo.Supplied
But Mr. Yack said he did not have those details.
“I don’t think [Mr. Missaghi] divulged any information,” Mr. Yack said. “I’ve been discussing a will with him and I do not believe he has any will.”
Among the documents filed with the Law Society are e-mails and financial records seized from Mr. Yack. They include an October, 2023, exchange in which he messaged Mr. Missaghi to say he feared the professional consequences he would suffer for working with him.
“It’s a scary situation and I feel that I am drowning,” Mr. Yack said.
In the message, he advised Mr. Missaghi to repay more than $100,000 in funds he had borrowed from Mr. Yack’s lawyers’ trust account.
“As I have stated in the past now is not the time to defend another Law Society claim dealing with breach of trust.”
Five other Toronto lawyers were disciplined by the Law Society in the 2010s for their roles in Mr. Missaghi’s earlier schemes. But Mr. Yack – who was first called to the Ontario bar in 1979 – was until recently considered by the society to be a lawyer in good standing.
Despite this, several lawsuits have been filed in Ontario courts in recent years alleging that Mr. Yack had a hand in real estate dealings that drained them of their assets. Complainants say that the lawyer claimed to represent their interests even as he secretly took direction to the contrary from Mr. Missaghi.
A lawyer for Mr. Yack has said his client denies the allegations and the cases have never been proven in court.
The Law Society documents show professional misconduct investigators pressed Mr. Yack in several interviews this summer, which were later transcribed, on why he thought he could lawfully take direction from Mr. Missaghi – given his name never appeared on the paperwork for the corporations that hired Mr. Yack.
“Why would you even be meeting Mr. Missaghi or speaking to [him],” Law Society forensic auditor Mary Ann Lord said.
“If someone is not a director of a corporation you can’t take directions from them,” questioned the Law Society investigator André Plouffe.
Mr. Plouffe also raised questions about allegedly mishandled money in client accounts that Mr. Yack appeared to have routed to and received from Mr. Missaghi.
“I did not see anything in the file that would indicate why you received those funds and for what legal purpose you received those funds, because it comes in and then it immediately comes out.”
Mr. Yack said that he allowed Mr. Missaghi to move some money in and out of his trust funds with the promise to pay back the money later.
“I was hoodwinked by him,” Mr. Yack said.
Among the complaints the Law Society is investigating against Mr. Yack is one filed by Mr. Kats and his wife, Alisa Pogorelovsky, who allege they were bilked out of more than $1-million in real estate investments.
Mr. Yack told Law Society investigators that he is an “old-timer” who often had trouble pulling key files and recalling contentious events and money movements.
He also claimed to have been misled by Mr. Missaghi and said he was shocked his client “has gone this way.”
“I still think he had the quality for being a very nice person.”