GTA tenant who turned a dozen luxury homes into rooming houses faces more charges
CBC
A Markham, Ont. man who previously rented a dozen luxury homes and turned them into illegal rooming houses is now facing more fraud-related charges connected to new property rentals.
Arif Adnan Syed was charged Tuesday with three counts each of fraud exceeding $5,000, make false statements in writing, possession of property obtained by a crime exceeding $5,000, and uttering forged documents, Newmarket court staff confirmed with CBC News.
The serial tenant was already facing 17 fraud-related criminal charges from York Regional Police for allegedly using fake identification documents in his applications to rent suburban homes in the Greater Toronto Area, which he then converted into rooming houses.
None of the charges have been proven in court.
CBC News last reported on Syed in December 2020, when a judge ordered him to pay $36,000 in restitution to the landlords of the dozen homes Syed had turned into rooming houses or he'd be arrested and jailed for four months.
During that proceeding, Syed testified that he received an average of $500 a month for each room he rented and so could have been making roughly $40,000 a month across his former rental properties when he had 90 renters.
In the year since the judge in that case voided Syed's leases with a dozen landlords, CBC News has confirmed Syed has rented out at least three new homes in Richmond Hill and Vaughan and turned them into rooming houses. All three landlords reported Syed to police.