A former Durham Regional Police detective is being sued for nearly $300,000 by people from whom he collected pre-construction home deposits when he was still a police officer for what allegedly turned out to be a scam.
Robert Silipo is one of six defendants named in a lawsuit filed in Oshawa, Ont., in June by the five plaintiffs who all claim he was their main point of contact for the home sales in 2022. The court filing also says he facilitated the execution of their agreements and mortgages on top of collecting $299,440 in now-missing deposits.
CBC News has reviewed text messages between Silipo and two of the plaintiffs, in which Silipo requests they meet him in a parking lot directly beside Durham’s central-east police division in Oshawa to exchange paperwork for the purchases.
“The fact that he met them in public [near] his place of work, which is a police station, obviously provided, I would think, some other form of assurance for our clients that this was a legitimate real estate transaction,” said Alex Henderson, the plaintiffs’ lawyer.
“He was someone whose job is to maintain public trust as a police officer; I’m sure that did play a role in our clients decision to trust him.”
Silipo declined an interview request for this story through his lawyer, Domenic Saverino. In an email, Saverino said his client denies any wrongdoing in the matter and that he is also a victim. The allegations against Silipo have yet to be tested in court, and he hasn’t been criminally charged.
The plaintiffs suing Silipo, like dozens of other buyers on which CBC News has previously reported, thought they were purchasing pre-construction homes at below-market prices with low mortgage rates from a legitimate developer called Paradise Developments when they made deposits payable to “Paradise Development Homes Limited.”
But in reality, that company has no connection to the legitimate GTA developer and had no right to market or sell Paradise Developments’ homes as CBC News first reported in 2022.
None of the other buyers on whom CBC News has reported dealt with Silipo. Instead, their agreements all involved another defendant in this recent lawsuit — Moiz Kunwar.
Other defendant charged with fraud
Kunwar was charged earlier this year with three counts of fraud and three counts of possession of property obtained by crime in connection to this alleged deposit scheme. Those charges stem from other pre-construction buyers.
This summer, a Peel Regional Police spokesperson said the service’s fraud bureau was continuing to investigate new and existing allegations of fraud involving Kunwar “relating to instances where he reportedly misrepresented himself as being a member of a real estate development company.”
The charges have yet to be tested in court.
Kunwar hasn’t filed a statement of defence for this latest lawsuit and didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story. But he previously told CBC News he intends to defend himself against all charges. In a court filing for another lawsuit, Kunwar denied all allegations of fraud and that he’d ever represented himself as a real estate investor, broker, developer or mortgage lender.
Just a ‘go-between,’ court doc claims
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Kunwar, Silipo and others believed they were buying pre-construction homes in a legitimate Paradise Developments project in Pickering, Ont. Their statement of claim alleges that Kunwar “fraudulently represented himself as a representative of Paradise Homes, and along with Silipo, facilitated the execution of the agreements and mortgages and deposits.”
Silipo’s statement of defence argues that Kunwar asked him to act as a “go-between” with the plaintiffs. Silipo says he told them he was the point of contact solely for “administrative issues,” and that they should deal directly with Kunwar for questions about their purchases.
Also in that court filing, Silipo denies he induced the purchases, acted as a facilitator for them, and that he was “unjustly enriched” by the sales. Instead, he argues he relied on representations that Kunwar made to him, and that his dealings with Kunwar were limited to his own purchase of a home.
His statement of defence includes a crossclaim against the other defendants, meaning that if Silipo is ordered to pay the plaintiffs, he argues the other defendants should be liable for those costs.
CBC News asked Silipo and his lawyer, Saverino, whether Silipo was paid referral fees for his role in the plaintiffs’ sales and if he received the home he purchased, or got his own deposit back. In response, Saverino said his client will only present his defence and position in the court proceedings.
No initial contact with Kunwar
Henderson, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, told CBC News that Silipo did not provide his clients Kunwar’s contact information until they began to have concerns about the legitimacy of the purchase agreements they signed in the spring of 2024.
“Until that point, every communication, whether it was through text, e-mail, phone call, was between our clients and Mr. Silipo,” said Henderson.
This February, Henderson sent legal demand letters requesting his clients’ deposits back to Kunwar, Silipo and the so-called Paradise Development Homes Limited. The last of those was sent to the address included on the plaintiffs’ purchase agreements, according to their statement of claim.
That address belongs to the real Paradise Developments.
Henderson received a response from the legitimate Paradise that said the similarly named company used its address in documents that appeared to come from the developer, but did not.
The letter also confirmed that the other company had no right to market or sell Paradise Developments homes and “the persons involved knew full well” that the homes subject to the agreements would never be owned by the “victims/purchasers involved.”
None of the plaintiffs have received their deposits back and their lawyer said that’s had a significant impact on them.
“One of our clients was hoping to use one of these properties for his mother who was unwell at the time,” said Henderson.
“It was very personally devastating for them, not just financially.”
