Local investors are increasing their calls to investigate a Toronto area financial planner they allege has failed to back investment loans he personally guaranteed.
CityNews first reported on Toronto financial planner Serguei Totrov in a Speakers Corner piece in July, when he said investors who worked with him would start seeing long overdue interest payments by August.
“But nothing happened yet,” said Margarita Nelyubova, the latest investor to come forward. She says she and her husband invested to fund a loan organized by Totrov using up their retirement savings.
“Like the others, we were told these loans would be personally guaranteed by Totrov with monthly interest payments,” she said.
While she received some of those interest payments, they stopped coming in last May.
She joins several others CityNews has previously interviewed, some of whom have been waiting for years for payments.
“He keeps promising ‘I will pay you, I will pay you’ but nobody knows when and if it’s going to happen in our lifetime,” said Lada Vorobyova, another investor who initially reached out to us last year to report concerns with her investment.
Efforts to get their money back have been fruitless so far.
At least two investors have successfully received court judgements ordering payments, but still haven’t received a dime.
They’re now turning to police. Many have filed reports but when we inquired, Toronto Police would not confirm whether there is any open investigation into the complaints.
“There have been no recent criminal charges laid by the Toronto Police Service against this individual,” a spokesperson said.
But Totrov is also facing other troubles. FP Canada, an independent professional oversight organization, suspended his financial planning certification.
He came under investigation by the organization after it received several complaints.
Their Hearing Panel found reasonable grounds to believe a significant risk of harm exists which ultimately led to their decision to suspend his certification “given Mr. Totrov’s extensive disciplinary history, multiple complaints indicating a pattern of misconduct, and related civil proceedings suggesting widespread and ongoing harm.”
As for what happened to his August promise to pay, Totrov did not respond to our latest request for comment but told us previously the beneficiaries of the investment loans he organized stopped making payments.
“I did not borrow these funds for my own benefit or personal use. The borrowed funds were advanced to and used by the borrowers, who received and spent the money,” he said in July.
At this point, investors remain skeptical they’ll ever see any money and many of them, including Nelyubova, are calling on police to investigate what they feel is fraud, saying it’s their last hope for justice.
“This just makes us feel like we have a very weak law system,” she said. “He hurt so many people and nothing happened to him.”
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