I’ve told the story a few times to clients and other agents, but as the years have gone by… it kind of got buried in the archives.
Until someone sent me a link to an article in Toronto Life.
The memories came flooding back.
As soon as I opened it, I stopped breathing and froze.
I KNOW this woman.
I dealt with Courtney before.
She ALMOST got us.
Almost.
Rewind back to 2005.
I was two years in the business, assisting a senior agent named Lou Tomasone in Toronto. Helping with open houses, faxing paperwork, booking showings. A mix of administrative work and sales work.
Yes, we used to FAX stuff. When I started, we were still using carbon paper offers with typewriters! That was only 20 years ago.
Anyway, the shopping plaza mentioned in the article came up for sale for $2 million, and Lou’s high net worth client Nick wanted to buy it.
We wrote the offer, and in an effort to be competitive, we submitted a $250,000 deposit cheque on behalf of the Buyer.
24 hours went by with no answer.
Then we started calling.
Then we called some more.
Then we went to her boutique brokerage office. The doors were sealed off and it was nearly empty.
OH SHIT. That wasn’t good.
We looked up her home address. Knocked on the door and a lady answered and said she didn’t know where Courtney was, and hadn’t heard from her in days.
At that point, we knew there was something going on.
Called her probably 50 times a day. Home number, office number, cell. Whatever we could find.
All while getting hourly calls from our client, “WHERE’S MY F#$%ING DEPOSIT MONEY?”
We had no idea.
We honestly thought that she fled the country with the money.
But we kept calling her. Over and over again.
My life was consumed with finding out what happened to this money. Day and night, it’s all I thought about.
Three days later, she picked up the phone.
I thought I dialled the wrong number.
“Is this Courtney???”
“Yes it is.”
“Courtney Wallis Simpson?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Oh thank goodness. You know, we’ve been trying to reach you about the deposit cheque being returned for our client.”
“Uh yes. (pause) Okay. Ummm, can you meet at the Subway at Keele & Major Mack at 8:00 tonight?”
With no hesitation, I said, “YES. ABSOLUTELY. I will see you then.”
Called Lou and told him that I set an appointment to get the money, and he could NOT believe it.
We didn’t want to tell the client until we actually had the money, because if she ghosted us… it would have been even worse than if we said nothing.
Time moved SO SLOW that day.
Seconds felt like hours.
Got to Subway about 20 minutes early. I was NOT going to be late for this. I watched every person in the parking lot like a detective.
At 7:55 PM, I went inside and sat down at a table.
“Are you Chuck?”
“Yes I am.”
She showed up! It was a miracle!
Shook hands with Courtney and resisted the urge to jersey her and give her uppercuts like we were in a hockey fight. Do you have any idea what a living hell you put us through???
But I kept my cool. She proceeded to hand me the cheque for a quarter of a million dollars… at a SANDWICH STORE!
No signs of guilt, no apologies.
Just handed it to me like it was a napkin. “Here you go. Nice meeting you.”
Have you ever held a $250,000 cheque before? It feels heavier than the actual weight of the paper.
I’ve never been so relieved in my life.
I barely slept for three days.
I almost cried with relief.
“Nick, I got your cheque. Heading over right now.”
Not long after that, we heard that Courtney had her real estate registration revoked for running Ponzi schemes and loaning out deposit money from her trust account.
We were told that we were one of the last groups to get our money back.
She went to jail, and then years later… she reached out to me to become Facebook friends.
My first reaction: “Are you f%&#ing kidding me?”
“Chuck I’m really sorry about what happened. I got in trouble with some people from Dubai.”
Just like the article said! It was all a lie.
There were no people from Dubai. Just a fraudster looking for her next job.
Now she’s learned how to scheme people without having her real estate license.
The article pieced together parts of a broken story, and reminded me nearly 18 years later how much of a bullet we dodged.
If you see this woman or hear her name anywhere near a real estate deal, turn and walk away.
I sent Lou the article after I read it, and he texts me back… “That b%tch can burn in hell.”
We never spoke about it after we got the cheque for Nick. It was something that we wanted behind us.
But I laughed for about 15 minutes at that message. It was therapeutic for both of us. Lou is normally the kind of guy that never says anything bad about anyone.
Like I always say to people… they don’t tell you about stuff like this on HGTV.
What a crazy business this can be sometimes.
