A Toronto woman is being ordered to pay RBC $95,000 after failing to realize she was being tricked into a mortgage fraud.
Angela Isaacs accepted $6,000 to co-sign a stranger's mortgage and signed the documents without reading them, reported the Toronto Star.
Madam Justice Anne Molloy of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice also decreed that Isaacs owes 6.3 per cent annual interest on the $95,000 loss from June 26, 2008 until the debt is paid and, within 30 days, $13,500 of the bank's legal fees. "She took the risk and got stung," said Molloy during the ruling. "That is her own responsibility, not the fault of the bank."
In late 2004, Isaacs was discussing her financial woes with her then common-law husband in a Tim Hortons coffee shop. She was earning $35,000 a year at a full-time job and raising three young children. A stranger called Mike told her she could receive $4,000 for co-signing a mortgage for six months so a man with a poor credit rating could buy a house. Later Isaacs decided against it but was persuaded after she was offered $6,000.
Isaacs clued into the scam when RBC started sending her late payment notices for a $280,000 mortgage on a house she owned with a man supposedly named Mark Forrest.