In Ontario, and indeed the rest of Canada, consumers are supposed to be protected from unscrupulous financial brokers such as those working in banking, loans, and real estate services such as mortgages. Part of that protection is accountability, as management are required to investigate any complaints and take action to resolve any issues. Verico The Mortgage Station.

For those not familiar with this story:

I am a journalist with 20+ years of experience in media, both in Canada and abroad. I am also the CEO of the Ontario Community Awareness Network, a benevolent not-for-profit that operates a community media channel called Five Points Media. Our purpose is to help charities and compassionate community groups through donated services.

I made the mistake of engaging the services of Verico The Mortgage Station in Lefroy to finance renovations of our new community studio. The broker, Lisa Purchase, took three times as long as was promised to close the mortgage, and she also disregarded, often with short notice, multiple dates by which she promised to have everything done.

On at least one occasion, Lisa Purchase used a delay to steer me toward a private mortgage at roughly twice the interest rate of the initial offer, which I declined. The brokers were also, in my opinion, cavalier about how their apparent negligence or incompetence was costing our benevolent community service tens of thousands of dollars.

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Worst yet, I discovered that the broker I thought I could trust had arranged for a personal loan through another broker at usury levels of interest, also known as loansharking. The rate of interest was set at an illegal 10% per month or 120% per year, twice the legal limit. This crime can be an indictable offence and can carry a punishment of imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

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All of this and more is what I experienced after making the very expensive and harmful mistake of entrusting the brokers and management at Verico The Mortgage Station, located at 1370 Killarney Beach Rd. in Lefroy.

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This ongoing story is presented in segments to enhance your access to the details:

1. Email sent to Mr. W. Mark Squire Chief Operating Officer and President at Verico Financial Group Inc - Pending
2. South Simcoe Police Reviewing Evidence of Loansharking - June 29, 2022
3. Stonewalling and Silence - June 18, 2022
4. Loansharking in Lefroy? - June 18, 2022
5. Incompetence or Negligence? - June 18, 2022

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Stonewalling and Silence

During the five weeks since this mortgage finally closed, six weeks late, David Flude, Principal Broker, License M08001108 of Verico The Mortgage Station has stonewalled all attempts to reconcile his company’s apparent abuse of trust and the seemingly obvious negligence or incompetence that caused so much harm to our business and benevolent not-for-profit. Initially, he blamed the obvious stonewalling on a ‘process’ that he claimed had to be completed as a "licensing requirement".

In an email dated May 13, 2022, David Flude promised as follows:

“I will go over this in full with you either via email or in person in our office when we've completed it. You deserve that from my perspective but I am also obligated to do this formally in writing based on my licensing requirements. If it was not a licensing requirement I would still do this as that is the way we like to do business. It's important to us.”

That promise was never honoured, and David Flude has made no attempt to contact me outside of responding in an often curt and condescending manner to my earlier emails. Now that he and his brokers are facing potential accountability for usury, also known as loansharking, and the ramifications of their apparent negligence or incompetence, David Flude has gone dark, even refusing to reply to my emails. Now, this important “process” that is a “license requirement” seems to be a moot point of little if any importance.

For nine weeks, the “professional” brokers at Verico The Mortgage Station turned the process of obtaining a simple remortgage into a seemingly never-ending nightmare of delays for me and my business. There is no conceivable reason or justification for this as the equity in the building is worth at least four times what we were seeking to move the mortgage and finish the renovations that were going to augment the value of the building and therefore increase the equity.

What they did accomplish is to put me in a position where I was strained sufficiently to borrow money at an illegal rate of interest that the brokers refused to refund until the prospect of criminal investigation, civil litigation, and an audit by the Financial Service Regulatory Authority loomed on the horizon. The brokers at Verico The Mortgage Station first took the illegally acquired interest and then held onto it for several weeks after being advised that their actions were in fact criminal. This inferred sense of privilege would suggest that the brokers had potentially done this before and evaded accountability.

I cannot say if this is true of Lisa Purchase and Renee Dadswell, and nobody knows how many times a similar scenerio has played out. However, as an investigator, I learned that people do not perpetuate or repeat criminal activity after they learn their actions are illegal. The exeption is when doing so is part of a pattern of behaviour for which the perpetrator has previously evaded responsibility. People become comfortable and confident through repeated experience.

Due to apparent incompetence or negligence, the month-and-a-half-long delay caused our business to lose as much as $25,000.00 in income due to the studio not being available to produce campaign videos during the provincial election. Now, as a result, we are unable to provide as much in the way of donated services to local charities and community groups through our benevolent not-for-profit services that have been credited with helping to raise tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for those in need in our community.

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Countup

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Only The Guilty Hide:

This clock shows how long it has been since this article was first published late in the morning on June 18, 2022. Since that date, our claims and allegations have been read by thousands of people as our various social media accounts and the shares and comments of others have directed readers to our website. Regardless, the management and brokers of Verico The Mortgage Station have done NOTHING to silence our story or refute or allegations.

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While the guilty hide in shadow, people of good conscience will raise the light to reveal the truth.
My name is printed clearly on the bottom of every page of this article.

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Verico The Mortgage Station asserts sales of $5 million a year, so if what we are reporting here is not 100% accurate and fully backed with evidence, they would have retained legal counsel to seek an injunction, or to threaten to sue us for defamation, or to take some form of quasi-legal action to protect the reputation of their business. However, they have not done so, and have in fact done nothing to even try to legitimize their actions that were in truth criminal. Now the South Simcoe Police are reviewing the hundreds of pages of emails and other documents that show the truth about how the brokers of Verico The Mortgage Station committed the crime of usury, or loansharking, by charging a level of interest at an annual rate of 120%, which is twice the legally permitted limit.

Apparently, the brokers and management of Verico The Mortgage Station believe they can simply ignore the crime they committed and the apparent negligence or incompetence that caused a benevolent not-for-profit to lose thousands of dollars. However, if that is true, they have not considered search engines and the interest that is already being shown in this article by some of Canada's larger mainstream media outlets. Today, most news stories are being broken by small independent media sources.

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Other Facts:

This article is a personal story about what happened to me when I made the mistake of refinancing the studio and production facilities of our benevolent not-for-profit community channel through Verico The Mortgage Station. I cannot claim to be neutral in my reporting, but all claims made in this article are backed by multiple pieces of emperical evidence. I am relying on the emails and other evidence to support my claims.

David Flude, the Principal Broker at Verico The Mortgage Station, was asked by me to contribute to this article before we released it. He chose instead to hide from his apparent negligence and the crimes of his brokers. On Friday, June 26, 2022, I sent a message to Mr. W. Mark Squire, Chief Operating Officer and President at Verico Financial Group Inc. via LinkedIn and the website at www.verico.ca. Again, we have received no reply. There is no logical reason that these professionals would evade our allegations unless they know them to be true.

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Investigative Journalism by John Ironside, Producer/Publisher, Five Points Media
A division of the Ontario Community Awareness Network, a provincially registered not-for-profit community media service
Learn about us at Testimonials, Media Reports, and Recent Stories

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