CALGARY — Police say they haven’t decided whether a criminal investigation is warranted into allegations of one of the biggest mortgage frauds in Canadian history.
“We’ve had thousands of documents provided to us by the Bank of Montreal. It goes to our commercial crime unit and they got it about 10 days ago,” RCMP Sgt. Patrick Webb said Monday.
“They are looking at it. It’s an assessment phase. No decision has been made yet whether we are entering into a criminal investigation or not.”
The CBC reported that the RCMP and Calgary police had told the Bank of Montreal they wouldn’t investigate potential fraud. The network quoted sources as saying top investigators from both forces met with the bank and said they weren’t interested in a criminal investigation.
CBC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Both police forces said last week that they were reviewing the voluminous case — more than 35,000 documents — assembled by the bank’s investigators.
The Bank of Montreal has filed a massive lawsuit accusing hundreds of Albertans — including mortgage brokers, realtors and lawyers — of a sophisticated scheme that generated $70 million worth of phoney mortgages.
Webb said it’s hard to say how long it will be before the commercial crime unit is done poring through the volumes of potential evidence. He said it’s unlikely that investigators would give each file just a cursory glance.
“Obviously this has got civil ramifications because the Bank of Montreal has got a lawsuit going,” Webb explained.
“Could it be criminal? You have to have some sense that there’s criminal activity — not just bad business, not just a failed business. There has to be some criminality identified in those documents and ... until that is done there’s no decision as to whether it is going to be criminal.”