A former notary public has been fined $33 million by a regulatory panel in British Columbia for committing a $100 million fraud on at least 200 investors.
The British Columbia Securities Commission panel has also ordered that Rashida Samji be banned permanently from participating in the province's capital markets.
The panel determined that between approximately 2003 and January 2012, Samji ran a Ponzi scheme and perpetrated fraud when she traded securities to 200 or more investors for proceeds of at least $100 million.
The commission said Samji told investors that she would hold their money in trust, and that it would be used only to secure letters of credit for the financing of a winery in Kelowna, B.C.
Investors were to earn fees for securing the letters of credit.
None of this was true, the panel determined.
In addition to the $33 million fine, the panel ordered that Samji pay the commission $10.8 million, the amount determined to be the difference between the monies deposited by the investors pursuant to the fraud, and the monies paid out to them.
Based on a forensic accounting analysis of the respondent’s bank accounts, conducted by the Royal Bank of Canada staff, Samji had a “windfall” of approximately $11 million from the fraud, the panel said.
The panel also found that Rashida Samji Notary Corp. and Samji & Assoc. Holdings Inc. participated in the fraud because the funds raised by, and distributed under, the fraud flowed through bank accounts in the names of these corporate respondents.