MANDEL: Victims still waiting for money entrusted to glamorous couple accused of fraud
· Toronto Sun
How the glamorous have fallen.
Nicholas Cartel and Singa Bui were once jetsetting lawyers with a $5-million mansion in Lawrence Park, two nannies, a Jaguar and Porsche in the driveway, and overflowing closets of Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks and other designer shoes and clothes.
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Their house of cards began to teeter in 2023 as clients started complaining the boutique firm in Liberty Village wasn’t releasing the millions of dollars they were holding in trust from real estate deals. Now the mirage has vanished, as has the money: In December Bui was disbarred and Cartel, currently suspended, is also facing a disciplinary hearing before the Law Society Tribunal.
Even more serious, Bui, 42, was arrested in the summer on 42 charges, including 24 counts of fraud over $5,000 and 17 counts of criminal breach of trust; Cartel, 61, was charged with one count of fraud over $5,000.
In October, their home sold at a $1 million loss and they reportedly now live with family members.
There have also been numerous default judgments against the couple – with the latest coming last month, ordering Cartel to pay $500,000, including punitive damages, to the Ingarra family and firefighters Paul Evans and Shaun Henderson.
This week, Ontario’s highest court rejected Cartel’s bid to have it set aside due to a jurisdictional issue.
So they’ve won – but they say the victory is meaningless.
Evans, 59, is nearing mandatory retirement and has lost $202,000. Henderson and his wife had invested their life savings of $233,000 and have yet to see a dime returned.
“We did everything right,” Henderson says. “We trusted professionals.”
None of the safety nets – from insurance to the Law Society’s Compensation fund – has stepped in to help them, they say.
“This isn’t about revenge,” Evans says. “It’s about whether the protections people believe are in place actually work.”
In a fiery response for comment, Cartel insisted he’d done nothing wrong.
“I do not accept any conclusions made by the lower Court which is replete with errors in law along with palpable and overriding errors with respect to findings,” he wrote in an email. “No party can assert that I was there (sic) lawyer.”
He also dismissed the criminal charge as “baseless.”
In December, Bui’s licence to practise law was revoked for “misappropriating, or in the alternative misapplying, funds from money received in trust for matters relating to 13 clients.” She was ordered to immediately pay $740,000 into the compensation fund and to repay up to a further $1 million.
For years, Cartel has thrown his wife under the bus, insisting to all that she was the managing partner with the large real estate practice while he concentrated on class-action law and had no involvement in the firm’s finances or day-to-day operations.
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When Bui repeatedly failed to show at hearings, her husband claimed she was being hospitalized for mental health reasons and he couldn’t ask her about the missing money.
When Superior Court Judge William Chalmers demanded she hand over her passport in 2024, Cartel said he couldn’t ask where it was because she was an involuntary patient at Sunnybrook hospital and anaesthetized three-times a week for electroshock therapy.
A couple who claimed the firm made off with $2 million they’d deposited for a house purchase hired a private investigator to conduct surveillance.
In a ruling, the judge noted Bui was seen out walking with Cartel and their four children.
“She did not seem to require any assistance,” he said.
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On Sept. 19, 2024, Chalmers issued an arrest warrant to compel Bui to come to court. When she finally appeared and surrendered her passport, the judge found she’d gone overseas after he’d ordered a warrant for her arrest.
“She was apparently able to travel to Portugal but unable to attend the case conferences or to comply with the court orders,” he wrote. “Instead of showing remorse and making all reasonable efforts to comply with orders, the defendants continue to treat the process with contempt.”
Her passport also showed Bui flew to Europe in October 2023 when millions went missing, he said.
“We now know that at the time the funds were transferred out of the trust account, Ms. Bui had traveled to Milan and Zurich. She has not provided a sworn statement of her worldwide assets. The defendants have not provided an accounting as to what happened to the funds paid into her trust account.”
He found both in contempt for not handing over key financial records and answering questions about the missing funds. Cartel was jailed for 30 days and Bui for 20.
Meanwhile, clients like Henderson are still waiting for justice.
“We want answers; we want accountability,” the firefighter wrote in a recent legal document. “And above all, we want our money back – the money we spent decades saving, the money that was supposed to give our children a future.”