The Law Society of B.C. has handed a Burnaby real estate lawyer a one-month suspension for professional misconduct.
Anthony Shiau has admitted that, between May 2021 and March 2022, he made a number of improper trust fund transactions and neglected to verify client identification information during a real estate deal, according to a consent agreement approved by the law society last month.
The agreement details a number of improper trust fund transactions (which didn’t result in personal financial benefit, according to the agreement) and includes information about two real estate deals with foreign buyers.
In December 2021, despite being familiar with the law society’s rules on client identification and verification, he failed to get a U.S. agent to verify the identity of U.S. clients involved in a real estate deal, according to the consent agreement.
Instead, he got copies of their U.S. passports by email and later got the clients to hold up their identification documents during a video conference call so he could take photos of them on his screen.
(The consent agreement noted COVID-19 restrictions were still in place at that time.)
“The Lawyer explained that because the purchase of the properties was in cash and did not require the notarization of any documents, he did not want to trouble the clients by having them meet with an agent to have their identification verified,” states the agreement.
In March 2022, Shiau got funds wired to him from a U.S. bank account after completing a real estate deal for two clients, but the bank sent the funds in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian dollars.
“Due to currency conversion rates, the funds were $405,243.77 in excess of the amount required to complete the property purchase,” states the consent agreement.
Shiau emailed the clients in July 2022 to say he still had some of their excess funds and offered ways to return the funds.
The clients said they now had a Canadian bank account but didn’t provide Shiau their Canadian banking information until halfway through August 2022.
Shiau made a number of improper trust fund deposits during the course of that deal, according to the consent agreement.
This is the first time Shiau has been written up by the law society, and the agreement noted Shiau is remorseful and admitted all of the misconduct when he was investigated.
As a mitigating factor, the agreement noted Shiau had reviewed a number of law society resources, including its anti-money laundering webinar and webinars for trust accounting basics and trust accounting regulatory requirements.
He has also reviewed the law society’s trust accounting handbook and adopted the law society’s trust accounting checklist, checklist of internal controls, and client identification, verification, and source of money checklist in his practice.
Shiau’s suspension will run from July 1, 2023 to July 29.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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