B.C. mortgage broker fined $45K for filing falsified documents with application

A for sale sign is pictured in Vancouver, B.C., Tuesday, June, 12, 2018. (Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press)

A B.C. mortgage broker has agreed to pay a $45,000 administrative penalty after admitting to submitting false or misleading information to a lender in a mortgage application.

Shahriar Abedi’s consent order with the B.C. Financial Services Authority was published on the regulator’s website last week, and the BCFSA issued a news release about the case Wednesday.

The regulator noted in its release that the maximum penalty available under the provincial Mortgage Brokers Act for Abedi’s misconduct was $50,000.

“BCFSA takes the integrity of the mortgage industry very seriously and will take action against individuals who fail to act in the public interest,” said Jon Vandall, BCFSA’s senior vice-president of compliance and enforcement, in the release.

“The administrative penalty of $45,000 is significant and underscores the seriousness of Abedi’s actions.”

According to the consent order, Abedi submitted two mortgage applications on behalf of an employee who did bookkeeping and internal account management for his company.

The first application, submitted in May 2020, was related to a property in North Vancouver. It listed the would-be borrower’s role as “office admin/bookkeeper” and their annual income as $49,920.

In February 2021, Abedi submitted a second application to the same lender on behalf of the same borrower, this time for a property located in Vancouver.

The second application said the borrower’s salary had been increased to $99,000 because she became a Chartered Professional Accountant in December 2020. It also included a letter from Abedi’s company saying the applicant was a CPA and a modified copy of a pay stub that had been edited to change the applicant’s title from “internal account manager” to “accountant.”

“The information submitted to a lender was false and/or misleading in that (the borrower) did not receive her CPA designation or any other accounting related designation,” the consent order reads.

Abedi admitted that he knew or ought to have known that his employee was not a CPA and that he “did not do due diligence regarding the representations he made to the lender.”

This behaviour amounted to conducting mortgage business “in a manner prejudicial to the public interest,” according to the consent order.

In addition to the $45,000 administrative penalty, Abedi also agreed to pay $2,500 to the BCFSA in “partial investigation costs.”