A former Toronto lawyer jailed and disbarred 17 years ago for behaving "like a weasel in a hen house" has been charged with fraud and obstruction of justice for allegedly misrepresenting himself in criminal court as a lawyer in good standing.
Howard William Cohen, 65, has been under investigation by Durham Regional Police since November.
He is accused of misrepresenting himself in court in at least two sets of proceedings, in November 2011, and November, 2012.
Police are anxious to speak to anyone else who may have been his client.
Mr. Cohen was one of four lawyers disciplined and disbarred in April, 1996 by the Law Society of Upper Canada.
He was found to have forged mortgage documents and misappropriated more than $800,000 from elderly neighbours and was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison.
At the time he had offices on St. Clair Avenue West and lived with his family in the upscale York Region of Thornhill, but prosecutors described him at trial as a compulsive, pathological gambler.
"You used your professional status as a cloak and behaved like a weasel in a hen house," Justice Hugh Locke of the Ontario Court, general division, told Mr. Cohen before dispatching him to the penitentiary.
"You are totally unfit to be a lawyer."
Mr. Cohen persuaded elderly neighbours whom he had known for many years to invest large parts of their life savings in mortgages that didn't exist, the court heard.
One of those he duped had Alzheimer's, and in the other case the victims suffered long-term damage to their health as a result of his deception.
In his defence, it was asserted that he had merely borrowed the money and had intended to repay it.
Mr. Cohen was arrested in November and has been free on bail since then.
Both instances in which he is now charged – one in Durham, the other in Toronto – involved clients accused of drinking and driving.
"They were two separate cases in which he was retained as counsel, and obviously he knew better," said Sgt. Nancy van Rooy of Durham police.
Mr. Cohen has pleaded not guilty and is to appear in court in Oshawa later this month.