Toronto artist says he lost $2M in stolen paintings, forged mortgage to alleged fraudster killed last week

Alijan Alijanpour met Arash Missaghi when Missaghi commissioned a Persian miniature painting of his late mother for $50,000 a decade ago.

Missaghi paid for that commission and a few more — earning the internationally renowned Iranian Canadian artist's trust.

But since then, Alijanpour, 68, alleges Missaghi stole his life's work: 38 paintings, worth more than a million dollars combined and which took him more than 20 years to complete, according to his lawsuit.

He also says Missaghi left him drowning in debt from a $1.2-million mortgage that he alleges Missaghi orchestrated and had forged in his name.

"I lost so much," Alijanpour told CBC Toronto through a translator. 

"I have never seen such a person like him in my life."

Missaghi and Samira Yousefi were shot and killed at Missaghi's Toronto office last week by a man named Alan Kats, who then killed himself. Kats's widow, Alisa Pogorelovsky, said her husband "could not handle losing our life savings, and that is what led to this tragic event." 

Pogorelovsky shared a note Kats left, naming the two he later killed and others, that said, "Stop these criminals from destroying people's lives."

Earlier this year, the couple sued Missaghi, Yousefi and others after losing $1.28 million in an alleged mortgage fraud.

CBC Toronto reviewed hundreds of pages of court records and found two dozen lawsuits against Missaghi and others claiming more than $90 million over 20 years, as well as police reports, criminal fraud charges and that two of Missaghi's lawyers had lost their licences. Despite all this, Missaghi was never convicted, sanctioned or found liable of any of his alleged serial frauds before his death.

Peter Smiley, a Toronto civil lawyer who started working on cases against Missaghi in 2018, said last week's tragedy "was the almost-inevitable result of decades of institutional inaction."

"These are criminal matters which, by virtue of the inaction of the police and the inaction of the Crown, have been forced into the civil justice system," he said.

Missaghi has remained an undischarged bankrupt since declaring bankruptcy in 2000. On paper, Smiley said this means he has no assets in his name against which to enforce a civil judgment.

But in reality, the lawyer alleges, Missaghi just concealed his "considerable assets" obtained from fraud using shell companies and straw purchases. In a recent order issued in Pogorelovsky's civil case, Ontario Superior Court Justice Lee Akazaki wrote that Missaghi and his wife "control or have controlled upwards of $50 million in North American assets."