After scamming their victims, some con artists go on to scam our courts with impunity

Convicts, including fraudsters, are skipping out on their court-ordered payments to their victims to the tune of tens of millions of dollars across the country, according to figures obtained by CTV W5.

This is the third of a three-part W5 investigation into how a convicted con artist bilked dozens of people in a landlord scam, how digital loopholes that may make the scam easier to pull off, and how the justice system that may be letting fraudsters off the hook to the tune of of millions of dollars across the country when it comes to repaying their victims

Convicts, including fraudsters, are skipping out on their court-ordered payments to their victims to the tune of tens of millions of dollars across the country, according to figures obtained by W5.

Of about $255 million in restitution ordered across Canada in the last five years, only about $7 million has been confirmed to have been repaid, those figures show.

And that may be an underestimate as several provinces don’t keep track of how much money has been ordered or returned, and leave it up to the victims to go to court and try to force the criminals to pay up.

One of those victims, Lesh Sowunmi, told W5 he was out $750 after he paid a deposit to a person he thought was the landlord of an Ajax, Ont. home.

He found out he was one of several people trying to move into that home – and the real landlord had no idea. He realized he had been scammed, and scrambled to find a new home and posted warnings about what happened to others in the neighbourhood.

“I think I am getting scammed here. Like, this doesn’t feel right,” Sowunmi recalled.