Toronto Liar Mortgages surfaces, money Laundering from china Destroying Canadian Middle class

The Canadian business school graduate turned whistleblower was shocked by the suspicious home loans he uncovered in 2022 upon joining a mortgage approval team at a small HSBC branch on the outskirts of Toronto.

While aware of concerns regarding Chinese investment in British Columbia real estate, he had never encountered dubious lending practices during his time at an HSBC branch in Campbell River, a tranquil town on the coast of Vancouver Island.

Upon his arrival at HSBC's Aurora bank, nestled in an affluent suburb north of Toronto, he unearthed a startling surge in home loans to members of the Chinese diaspora amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chinese immigrants scattered across Toronto were securing mortgages from HSBC, purportedly based on lavish incomes from remote jobs in China. One striking instance involved an Ontario casino employee who owned three properties and claimed an annual income of $345,000 in 2020, supposedly from remote data analysis work for a Beijing firm.

Prior to joining HSBC Canada, the whistleblower had delved into fraudulent mortgage practices during his Business Masters studies at Vancouver Island University. Upon reaching Aurora in February 2022, through meticulous scrutiny of the branch's loan records and probing discussions with colleagues, he pieced together staggering conclusions.

His investigation revealed that since 2015, over 10 HSBC branches in the Toronto area had extended at least $500 million in home loans to diaspora buyers with inflated incomes or fictitious employment in China.

The whistleblower believed these schemes had escalated during the pandemic as borrowers could plausibly claim remote work arrangements while residing in Canada.

Despite an expected annual issuance of approximately $23 million in residential loans for a branch of Aurora's size, this particular branch had disbursed $88 million in mortgages in 2020 and over $50 million in 2021, as per the whistleblower's findings.

Dubbed D.M. by The Bureau, the whistleblower, originally from India and a minority among predominantly Chinese-Canadian colleagues at the Aurora branch, persisted in his investigations.

His conviction grew as he probed deeper into the operations of HSBC Canada and other Canadian banks, such as CIBC, revealing systemic issues with questionable mortgages granted to diaspora buyers lacking verified sources of wealth in China.

Losing sleep over his discoveries, in April 2022, D.M. took a bold step by sending an audacious email to senior bank executives, outlining his suspicions of potential mortgage fraud at HSBC Bank Canada and implicating some employees in financial wrongdoing.

This bold move prompted an internal investigation at HSBC Canada, leading to some reforms, as evidenced by internal emails obtained by The Bureau.

However, more than a year later, dissatisfied with the bank's response, D.M. took the unprecedented step of sharing his story and a trove of internal documents for a comprehensive journalistic probe into Canada's housing affordability crisis.

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