Crown decided prosecuting a fraud charge for $600K phishing scheme wasn't in public interest

Crown lawyers withdrew a fraud charge against a Toronto man who had been found liable for fraud in civil court for misappropriating more than $600,000 in an email phishing scheme because they determined the prosecution wasn't in the public interest, CBC Toronto has learned.

The decision was revealed in civil court filings in which a Hong Kong company is still trying to collect most of the $637,753 that Toronto resident Andre Dixon was ordered to pay by Ontario's Superior Court of Justice more than two years ago.

In an email, the Toronto police officer who handled the criminal case told the company's fraud recovery lawyer, Norman Groot, that "the Crown's Office didn't believe it was in the public's interest to proceed with a trial" given that a judgment had been made against the accused in a civil lawsuit.

Criminal court records confirm that charges of fraud over $5,000 and possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000 were withdrawn against Dixon in this case in May. He did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

"It did raise the issue of does crime pay?" Groot, a Toronto lawyer, said about the Crown's decision to withdraw the charges.

"When the bad guys know that there's a lack of public interest — the apparent view of the Crown — they don't feel very deterred."

Both Groot and a financial crime expert who is not involved in the proceedings told CBC Toronto that the case raises serious questions about what Ontario's criminal justice system is doing to deter fraud, which has skyrocketed in the province and across Canada in the last decade.

"This is absurd," said Vanessa Iafolla, founder of Anti-Fraud Intelligence Consulting in Halifax.

"I cannot fathom the reasons for which it's not in the public interest to prosecute a crime that has been identified by Statistics Canada as the single most prevalent crime that Canadians are facing."

Earlier this year, a CBC Toronto investigation examined how Ontario's enforcement systems are handling fraud cases and whether they're helping victims.

The four-part series, The Cost of Fraud, discovered an overloaded justice system that is reluctant to prosecute fraud — failing to deter fraudsters and putting the onus on victims to recover their own losses if offenders refuse to pay them back as ordered.

Since then, Statistics Canada released a survey that found more Canadians reported they were victims of fraud than of any other crime, and the number of fraud victims was nearly double the number of people who said they were the victim of a violent crime. 

CBC Toronto asked Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General, which oversees Crown prosecutors, why this fraud prosecution wasn't considered in the public interest because of the civil court judgment.

In an emailed statement, a ministry spokesperson said court transcripts can be ordered to see any comments placed on the record in the case.