The B.C. Securities Fee says a Vancouver Island man defrauded an investor of $1 million by mendacity in regards to the possession of a legendary resort.
A BCSC panel discovered that Timothy Craig Durkin deceived an investor by falsely representing that SHH Holdings, by way of a subsidiary, owned the entire shares of the Sooke Harbour Home resort.
In a call launched Tuesday, the panel mentioned Durkin raised $1 million from an investor between December 2015 and March 2016, promising them a 40 per cent share within the resort by buying 40 per cent of the shares in SHH Holdings.
The investor, a Chinese language citizen wanting to immigrate to Canada, had already invested in a spa enterprise within the Sooke space and was contemplating broadening her investments within the area.
The investor’s firm superior $1 million between December 2015 and March 2016 to purchase the shares. The cash was spent and never recovered by the investor or her firm, the ruling says.
Based on the ruling, Durkin, a director of SHH Holdings, argued that the investor was not misled and he had no intent to mislead her.
Durkin mentioned he made it clear to the investor, particularly by way of the supply of an unsigned memorandum of settlement despatched to the investor’s advisers, that SHH Holdings didn’t but personal the resort shares.
The BCSC panel concluded that SHH Holdings and Durkin made false statements in regards to the resort’s possession on three events.
The ruling included a 2015 e mail to the investor’s lawyer that learn that SHH Holdings “owns 100 per cent of the excellent and issued share capital of Sooke Harbour Home Inc., the working firm.”
In response to a query about whether or not SHH Holdings was the only shareholder of the resort or whether or not it is going to be buying shares at a later time, Durkin informed the investor’s lawyer in a 2015 e mail that the shares had been “already acquired.”
“This alternate of query and reply could be very clear,” the ruling says. “It contradicts all of Durkin’s proof and submissions to the impact that he believed the investor understood that Holdings didn’t then personal the resort shares.”
The panel has directed the events to make submissions concerning sanctions.
Authorized battle for management of resort
Durkin spent years battling the resort’s founders, Sinclair and Frederique Philip, for management of Sooke Harbour Home, the legendary vacationer vacation spot that has hosted Hollywood stars and royalty.
In 2020, Justice Jasvinder Basran awarded the Philips $4 million in relation to a deal they struck with Durkin and a accomplice in a failed 2014 share buy settlement for the resort.
The Philips reached a share buy settlement in 2014 that will have seen Durkin and a accomplice buy their curiosity within the resort for $6 million.
The Philips believed they had been going to get $2 million, and based on the judgment, Durkin assured them that SHH Holdings had the sources to cowl the present mortgage and curiosity owed to the Enterprise Growth Financial institution of Canada.
In reality, Basran discovered that regardless of guarantees of a “syndicate” or “posse” of buyers from Tehran to Zurich, SHH Holdings by no means raised greater than $54,000.
“[Durkin’s] view of the reality is no matter will serve his pursuits within the second. He’s fully unencumbered by strange norms of morality, integrity and decency,” Basran wrote.
“He’s a garden-variety bully who preys upon these whom he perceives to be weaker than himself and susceptible to his mistruths and manipulation.”
In 2020, North Vancouver-based IAG Enterprises bought the land, the Sooke Harbour Home constructing and its related belongings in a court-ordered foreclosures sale for $5.62 million.
The resort is closed for renovations and a re-opening date has not been set.
The resort was listed on the market final yr at $13.3 million.