(Vancouver Sun) – Members of a Surrey-based autofraud ring have been ordered to pay ICBC more than $370,000 in damages following a recent B.C. Supreme Court decision.
Jaspal Singh Atwal, Vikram Singh Atwal, Jasraj Singh Bains and Jagjit Singh Gill were sued by the Insurance Corp. of B.C. for their roles in a scheme to make phoney Alberta registration documents for stolen vehicles and resell them. The Aug. 15 decision found the four defendants liable for nearly $345,000 in special and punitive damages.
Another four defendants and one business were also sued and found liable for damages for their roles in acquiring some of the stolen vehicles. The damages will help recover costs incurred by ICBC in relation to 11 vehicles stolen in 2002 and 2003.
The scheme was fairly simple, as illustrated by the case of one of the stolen cars, a grey 2002 Audi S6.
The luxury sports car was reported stolen by its lessee on April 4, 2003; by April 9, Alberta registration papers had been created for the car, giving it a fake vehicle identification number and a fake owner, “John Oliver.”
These documents were taken to Sussex Insurance in Burnaby along with a false private vehicle-inspection report. A Sussex agent prepared a form transferring the auto from “John Oliver” to a friend as a gift.
On April 22, 2003, the car was imported to the United States by Riad Iskandar Youssef and International Autohaus. On May 6, 2003, Washington police recovered the vehicle from Mount Baker Auto Sales in Ferndale.
ICBC later sold the recovered vehicle for $57,551, recovering some of the $91,342 it had paid to lessor VW Credit Canada Inc. after the vehicle was stolen.
In his ruling, Justice Austin F. Cullen found Jasraj Bains, Riad Youssef and International Autohaus jointly and severally liable for $33,791, which covers ICBC’s losses.
Many of the vehicles caught up in the scheme – including a Cadillac, two Audis, and five Ford F-350s – command high prices. But Cullen said he had no way to know how much money the defendants had made.
“However,” he wrote in his ruling, “I am satisfied that the combination of special and punitive damages that I have awarded is adequate to deter and denounce the behaviour …”
Cullen noted that ICBC was not the scheme’s only victim. “The public, through the police, were compelled to make significant expenditures in time, effort, and money to investigate and recover the vehicles … It is clear that the plaintiff will not recover all of its costs, nor will the motoring public.”
The decision concludes the second and third of five civil actions that ICBC has launched against 89 conspirators of the fraud ring. A 2010 decision ordered defendants that included the two Atwals to pay more than $300,000 in connection with the false registration and sale of stolen vehicles.