Toronto Conman bilks elderly for more than one million

[Aaliyyah]

Suave Arvind Sanmugam enrolled his daughters at expensive Bishop Strachan private school and bragged that he was a Cambridge-educated venture capitalist with the Midas touch.

 

In reality, the conman was an English grad from India with no financial background who took the elderly and the trusting for a costly ride that has left several destitute.

 

Sanmugam, 52, has pleaded guilty to bilking his “clients” of more than $1 million from 2007 until his arrest in 2010. Among his victims are a retired couple in their 80s forced to sell their home, an elderly widow who lost her life savings and a young doctor at Women’s College Hospital who he wooed on the e-harmony dating website and eventually asked to marry him — while she trustingly handed over her cash.

 

“This was a crime motivated by avarice; this was a crime of greed. I find any argument to the contrary, ridiculous,” declared Justice Todd Ducharme in a blistering indictment of Sanmugam during his sentencing hearing. “He lied about the nature of his qualifications and the nature of his company and he would seek out people who were not financially sophisticated.”

 

According to the agreed statement of facts, his company, Bunting & Waddington, was never registered with the Ontario Securities Commission and Sanmugam wasn’t licensed to trade securities or offer financial advice in Ontario or anywhere else.

 

“This is an unmitigated horror story for these complainants and there’s no hope of restitution,” says Crown attorney Grace Hession David, who is asking for a three-year sentence.

 

The Blizzards are an elderly Barrie couple who were told by Sanmugam that if they invested $100,000 with his company, he could make them a monthly profit of $8,000 less his $3,500 fee. They mortgaged their home and gave him $118,700.

 

They paid Sanmugam his outrageous retainer every month, unaware their portfolio was making no money and they were trading heavily on margin. They only realized they were in trouble a year later when they began to get margin calls from TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage. By then, Sanmugam refused to take their panicked calls.

 

The desperate couple lodged a complaint with securities regulators but were told nothing could be done for them because Sanmugam was never licensed.

 

He met his next victim, 73-year-old Linda Zink, while she was dropping off her grandchildren at Bishop Strachan in 2008. The Vancouver widow was in town on a visit and Sanmugam befriended her and convinced her that he was a professional investor who could earn her enough to afford a second home in Toronto.

 

He warned her to keep their plans secret. Eventually she transferred $662,000 to him by mortgaging her properties and liquidating the entire stock portfolio her late husband had left her. Sanmugam didn’t even pretend to invest her money for her — he just transferred the cash from his account into his other business ventures.

 

When Dr. Tuhina Biswas, 31, met Sanmugam on eHarmony in the fall of 2008, he told her he was unattached when he was really a divorced father of four with a common-law wife. “His behaviour from the outset was to gain my trust,” she wrote in her victim impact statement. “He used our intimate relationship to exploit me and my family.”

 

Claiming to a certified financial advisor, he said could make her money to help support her disabled brother. Biswas had no financial background and trusted her lover’s smooth-talking assurances. She and her mother mortgaged the family’s home and gave Sanmugam $328,705 to invest.

 

During their relationship, Biswas also lent him about $170,000. In January 2010, he proposed and they were supposed to marry in August.

 

Instead, he broke her heart by simply disappearing that June.

 

She learned later that not only had he hit on her friend using the same dating website, he’d been charged with fraud. She filed a report with police two months later.

 

Asked if he had anything to say, the fraudster apologized to his victims and pledged to pay the money back. “I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for this. I’m sorry,” he told the court.

 

Ducharme will deliver his sentence Oct. 9. Thankfully, Sanmugam, a temporary resident, faces deportation to his native India after serving his time.

 

 

*****

 

Three victim impact statements were filed with the court:

 

•Dr. Tuhina Biswas, 31, wrote that her lying “fiance” left her humiliated and devastated.

 

“I have been traumatized, my sense of financial security gone, my belief in the fundamental goodness of humanity — shattered. I feel like someone has taken a hammer to me and broken me into a thousand little shards of glass on the inside.”

 

She suffers from constant guilt: her 69-year-old mother is now unable to retire and they can no longer afford to send her disabled brother to his program.

 

“The worst thing of all is I feel that I no longer trust myself to make any important decisions.”

 

•Linda Zink, 73, wrote that she must now live off her children’s charity and she’s consumed by embarrassment and suicidal thoughts: “The emotional loss my family and I have suffered is horrific and ongoing and will be for the rest of our lives. For the past four years my pride, my dignity, my self-worth, my confidence and my health have been irrevocably damaged. Arvind Sanmugam has destroyed my spirit.”

 

•William and Barbara Blizzard blame Sanmugam for ruining their retirement years and ensuring that their grandchildren will not be able to afford university.

 

“You came into our home and lied like someone who knows how to do it and I guess you did,” they wrote. “When we went to the bank, there was nothing there.”