The Toronto lawyer who stole clients' money for vacations, handbags and shoes has been convicted of contempt

A disgraced real estate lawyer who admitted this week to stealing millions in client money to support her and her family's lavish lifestyle was handcuffed in a Toronto courtroom Friday afternoon and marched out by a police officer to serve a 20-day jail sentence to serve for contempt of court. while her husband and mother watched.

Singa Bui “consistently ignored the court's orders and complied only when faced with an arrest warrant or the threat of incarceration,” Ontario Superior Court Justice William Chalmers said as he sent her to jail.

He also ordered that two days after Bui is released next month, her husband and former partner, Nicholas Cartel, must go back in to serve 10 more days of his own contempt sentence, following a bizarre twist that saw him wrongfully released early.

It's the latest chapter in the saga of the wealthy law couple whose now-defunct firm, Cartel & Bui LLP, nearly seven million dollars embezzled of home buyers and sellers in southern Ontario before the plan stalled last year.

At least 26 plaintiffs are suing Cartel, Bui and their firm in court. Many have already received judgments totaling millions of dollars, and orders for Bui and Cartel to hand over documents and answer questions about where the money went. But they would then face what the judge has described as repeated failures by Bui and Cartel over the past 10 months, triggering the contempt findings.

Bui's license to practice law in Ontario, along with Cartel's, has been suspended pending further investigation. He has repeatedly claimed that he had no knowledge of any form of embezzlement, which the judge often finds unbelievable. Police are also investigating and have not yet decided whether to file criminal charges, which could lead to years in prison.

The case has exposed flaws in both the Law Society of Ontario's self-regulation of lawyers' trust accounts and in the province's home-buying process, which critics say is vulnerable to financial manipulation by unscrupulous lawyers.

Cartel and Bui “breached their fiduciary duty, and as lawyers, those are the people we have to trust,” said plaintiff Nancy Marsilla of Richmond Hill, Ont., who was awarded the $220,000 the firm held after the sale of her former home in 2021 while she settled her divorce.

Marsilla attended court on Friday to serve Bui with legal documents before she was taken to jail.

“It's really disturbing that lawyers can get away with that. And it's taken so long – since 2014, I can't believe it,” she said.

'Far beyond our means'

Marsilla was referring to revelations at a hearing earlier this week and in a last-minute affidavit from Bui in which the lawyer now admits that she began stealing from her firm's trust account – a tightly regulated lawyer's bank account that only holds money belonging to clients and not the company – as early as 2014.

In her statement, Bui says she initially poached money from clients for “little things,” like when she and Cartel fell behind on a bill payment, but over the years has progressed to stealing tens of thousands of dollars at a time for luxury purchases such as Prada handbags. and Christian Louboutin shoes.

Even the prison doesn't follow my orders. What can I say?– William Chalmers, Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario

She also said she used “an amount I cannot quantify at this time” to fund her and her husband's “unprofitable” business ventures.

Bui's description reads like a Ponzi scheme: “I would then try to replace that money with money I received from subsequent real estate transactions. Over time, it became increasingly difficult to keep up with the repayments, and I found myself in more and more debt, causing I had to incur more and more debt. a constant flow of new customer money to pay off the debts.”

Her affidavit includes photos and credit card statements showing purchases of $12,175 at Christian Dior Couture, $19,585 for a stay at the Rosewood London hotel and $119,000 on two framed photos of Rodney Smith in front of the law firm's office.

“My husband and I were living way beyond our means,” she said. “Our kids went to private school for about $100,000 a year and we had two nannies for about $95,000 a year… We also adopted a luxury lifestyle that we couldn't afford.”

'I got so angry when I read this'

Another plaintiff, Thierry Cohen-Scali, who has a $470,000 judgment against Cartel, Bui and their firm, said he could not read Bui's statement.

“I had to put it in the middle because I got so angry,” he said Friday. “She told us she lived a fantastic life for ten years with our money, and then tried to pose as a victim.” Bui has suggested to the court that her actions were partly caused by both mental health issues and the cartel's need for funds for various business schemes.

Cohen-Scali said that, perhaps counterintuitively, the silver lining is that Bui's statement makes it clear that the stolen money is largely gone. That, he said, means victims won't have to spend much more time or money chasing the couple's assets, and can instead start pushing for compensation from a special Law Society of Ontario fund that helps victims of fraud by lawyers can help.

However, the law society's compensation fund requires victims to try to recover their losses directly from a lawyer – for example by suing them – before filing a claim, which Cohen-Scali criticized as “double victimization.”

“First someone steals my money. Then the legal system tells me, 'You have to go after that money.' But everyone knows I'm out of money. I spent $60,000 on attorney fees. It's throwing money after bad,” he said.

Even then, the law society's decisions on compensation are discretionary and unappealable, he noted, and payouts are capped at $500,000.

Kartel released early

In another strange twist, Bui's lawyer announced at a hearing on Monday that Cartel had been released early from prison due to his 30-day contempt sentence handed down on October 25.

Apparently, he was granted the standard parole of a criminal sentence after serving two-thirds – even though the judge had explicitly ordered him to serve his full time.

“I am shocked,” Chalmers complained in court Monday before issuing an arrest warrant for Cartel. 'Even the prison doesn't follow my orders. What can I say?'

During Friday's hearing, Cartel sat separately from his wife and her mother in the gallery. Bui was marched past him on the way to prison. The court then ordered him to surrender to the Toronto South Detention Center on December 14 to serve the remaining ten days of his sentence, meaning he will be released just in time for Christmas.