Real Estate
Hamptons of Canada Is Ensnared in Alleged Mortgage Fraud Scheme
A Toronto businessman is accused of using community connections to sell investments in lake country mortgages — and misappropriating the money.
Summer homes along Ontario’s Lake Couchiching.
Photographer: Business Wire/AP Photo
The wooded lake lands north of Toronto are dotted with vacation homes that have made the region — known as Cottage Country — a favorite getaway of the city’s elite. And for years, mortgage broker Sandy Sussman offered Torontonians a lucrative and seemingly safe way to invest in its real estate.
Now Sussman faces allegations of fraud after his decades-old business collapsed, bringing echoes of Bernie Madoff’s famous Ponzi scheme to the Canadian housing market’s recent boom and bust.