Homeowner horror
Paul Reviczky, who fled Hungary in 1957 to escape Communist persecution, is one of the latest homeowners to discover that Ontario law favours banks, mortgage companies and purchasers over victims of fraud

Toronto Star
Homeowner horror
'My sense of security in Canada is gone' says Paul Reviczky, who learned about identity theft the hard way

Aug. 26, 2006
AROLD LEVY
An 89-year-old man has been left both heartbroken and betrayed after his North York bungalow was stolen from him in the rising wave of title fraud.
                                             
    Paul Reviczky, 89, stands outside his house at 220 Sheppard Ave. W.
    The  property was sold out from under him in May, likely by “tenants” who 
    forged his name on a power of attorney. “I think he was targeted
    because he is elderly,” his niece says.

Paul Reviczky, who fled Hungary in 1957 to escape Communist persecution, is one of the latest homeowners to discover that Ontario law favours banks, mortgage companies and purchasers over victims of fraud.

"I was shocked to learn that this could be the law in Canada ," Reviczky says. "I fled Hungary to escape lawlessness like this and now my sense of security in Canada is gone."

Gerry Phillips, Ontario 's minister of government services, vowed yesterday to change the land-registry system to protect homeowners like Reviczky from title fraud.

 Reviczky purchased the property at 220 Sheppard Ave. W. in 1980 for $67,500 to generate a rental income that would help pay for the education of relatives back in Hungary. 

The retired tobacco farmer, who came to Canada 49 years ago with his wife Ilona and his then 3-year-old daughter Marietta, says he felt so strongly about his duty to help out the family he left behind that he specified in his will that the property could not be sold after his death because the income was to be used for their support.

Since his wife's death in February 2005, he has lived alone in his home a few kilometres from the rental property.

Reviczky could not believe his ears on June 26 when his neighbour, a real estate agent, told him she had noticed on the computer that he had sold his rental property in May.

"So I went back to my office, got the record from the computer and showed it to him," Vivian Ho told the Toronto Star. "His face turned red and I was worried that he was going to have a heart attack."

Police believe Reviczky's most recent "tenants" forged his name on a power of attorney that purported to give a grandson named "Aaron Paul Reviczky" authority to sell the home on his behalf.

"I don't have a grandson named Aaron," Reviczky says. "I don't have any grandsons."

On May 15, "Aaron Paul Reviczky" sold the property on his behalf for $450,000 to a purchaser named Pegman Meleknia, who took out a mortgage of $337,500.

"I did not get the proceeds," Reviczky says.

Reviczky's lawyer, Tonu Toome, says it was "very painful" to have to break the news to Reviczky that he may lose his house forever — even though he was an innocent victim of fraud — because Ontario law recognizes the transaction as valid where the purchaser is unaware of the scam.

"I had to tell him that although he would ultimately receive financial compensation for the loss of his home, this would entail legal fees and an application to Ontario 's Land Titles Assurance Fund, which could take several years," Toome says.

Says Reviczky: "I want my home ... not just some money."

Phillips, who bears responsibility for the province's land titles registration system, says he met last week with 50 representatives of all the communities affected by title fraud — including police, real property and financial institutions — to get advice on how to stem this increasingly prevalent crime.

"This is a high priority for our government and I want people to know that we are treating it seriously," Phillips says.

Earlier this summer, several other identity-theft victims in Toronto were also shocked to discover they weren't protected by the law.

Susan Lawrence is a North York widow who faces the loss of the 100-year-old Victorian home she had lived in for 30 years — after criminals used publicly available information to sell her house without her knowledge and put a $300,000 mortgage on it.

Elizabeth Shepherd, an actress, lost her furnished Leslieville home to identity thieves, who rented the home and sold it to an accomplice after creating a false Elizabeth Shepherd. The accomplice took out a $250,000 mortgage, defaulted and disappeared.

Both women expect to spend years — and money they would rather not spend on lawyers — trying to sort out the mess.

Reviczky had put a "for rent" sign on his property on March 1 after the previous tenants who had lived there for 12 years had gone back to British Columbia.

Five days later, he agreed to rent the home to a couple who identified themselves as "Kristina and Adam Skurik." They signed rental papers and handed him $2,500 in $100 bills for first and last month's rent.

But the house remained empty. In mid-April, Reviczky says, he was told by Kristina Skurik that the couple had rented the house to someone who was coming from Russia.

The last time he ever saw either of the Skuriks was May 13, when Kristina gave him $1,250 in cash and told him the people would arrive "in a short time."

"Kristina was a very pretty, quiet girl, about 5 feet, 6 inches, and she appeared very likeable and trustworthy," Reviczky says.

A telephone check of listings throughout North America failed to turn up any Kristina or Adam Skurik.

Reviczky is now aware that he allegedly sold his house through the power of attorney that had been notarized by a North York lawyer named Sheldon Caplan, who said in an interview he is unable to discuss the case.

Reviczky says he was surprised to see at the bottom of the power of attorney — which Caplan notarized above what appears to be his scribbled initials — a notation that the document was "acknowledged before me this 18th day of April 2006 by Reviczky Paul, who is personally known to me of who has produced Drivers Licence."

"I have never retained solicitor Sheldon Caplan," Reviczky said in a statement he prepared for his lawyer. "I do not know him and did not communicate with him."

Toronto lawyer Satwant Singh Khosla, who represented the purchasers — parents who bought the property as an investment for their son — says his clients are "innocent buyers" who have suffered emotionally and financially because of the fraudulent transaction "through absolutely no fault of their own."

"It was a straightforward transaction," Khosla said. "We never realized that the power of attorney under which the property was transferred was fraudulent."

Khosla says his clients are on the hook for mortgage payments even though they have been unable to access the property because its legal status is in a state of flux.

Reviczky's daughter, Marietta Reviczky-Dolan, who lives in Montana , says people like her father should have the title returned to them and not left with the purchaser.

"They (the owners) have invested more than money in it," she says. "It is their past and their lives have been centred around it. It means more to them."

With files from Associated Press

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