A Burnaby currency exchange is suing a former employee for allegedly defrauding the company of more than $4.4 million over several years.
Crystal Currency Exchange Inc. at Crystal Mall provides foreign currency exchange services and helps Canadian customers send money to China.
The company launched a civil suit against ex-employee Dan Qing Wang (also known as Lisa Wang) and her mother Pu Wang in March 2022.
Unauthorized transactions
In January 2022, the company had identified a transaction on its daily ledger that hadn’t been authorized and didn’t match any of its known customers, according to the company's most recent notice of civil claim.
Wang, who initiated and completed the transaction, told the company it had been a "mistake" and that she had also accidentally deleted all the records and emails associated with it, according to the claim.
Wang paid back the funds (42,000 Chinese renminbi – or yuan – just over $8,110 today), left the company, and moved back to China.
An internal investigation then revealed hundreds of unauthorized transactions over many years, all completed on days Wang was working and signed off on the ledger, according to court documents.
As of October, the company said it has discovered 457 such unauthorized transactions totalling nearly 24 million renminbi ($4.4 million).
"Only Ms. Wang knows the full extent of her actions," states Crystal Currency's notice of civil claim.
The company says it doesn't know the full particulars of Wang's scheme but claims she used the unauthorized transactions to funnel money into accounts she had set up in China and then covered her tracks during the reconciliation process.
Wang denies the Crystal Currency's claims.
In her response to the company's lawsuit, she says she mistakenly sent the January 2022 transaction to someone she believed to have been a past client of Crystal Currency in China.
She says she agreed to repay the money herself right away and recover it later from the Chinese client, but Crystal Currency refused to give her access to its previous client information.
Wang denies any allegations of misappropriating funds from Crystal Currency and says there were five other people besides her responsible for outbound transactions at various times.
Wang says the reason she stopped working for Crystal Currency in January 2022 was because the company had directed her to do things she disagreed with and that might have been illegal, including not reporting certain clients and their transactions to FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) when they should have been reported and signing off on a transaction on which her boss, Angelyna Shi, had forged a client's signature.
Wang claims Shi also compelled her to impersonate her during phone calls to Canadian banks regarding Shi's personal accounts because Shi didn't speak fluent English.
Wang says she complied in order to keep her job.
In its response, the company denies Shi compelled Wang to impersonate her, saying instead that Shi sometimes asked employees to translate for her when she was talking to Canadian banks.
Burnaby properties
Crystal Currency has successfully applied to have assets belonging to Wang and her mother frozen, including a $1.6-million house at Burns Place in Burnaby.
Crystal Currency says Wang and her mother had jointly owned the house before May 2016, at which time Wang and her mother transferred full ownership to Wang.
One week after being asked about the unauthorized transaction in January 2022, however, Wang transferred full ownership of the house into her mother's name for "$1.00 and natural love and affection," according to the civil claim.
Crystal Currency claims the move was designed to "defeat, delay, hinder, prejudice, or defraud" Wang's creditors, including Crystal Currency, of their "just and lawful remedies" against her and her property.
But Wang says she had only ever held legal title on the property while her mother retained 100 per cent beneficial interest.
She says her mother had never intended to gift the house to her, and Wang transferred the title back to her in January 2022 at her request.
In her response to the lawsuit, Pu Wang says she never intended to transfer the property to her daughter as an outright gift and that her daughter had made no payment or contribution to the acquisition, maintenance, upkeep, property tax or mortgage of the property.
Crystal Currency rejected those claims, saying in its reply that Wang had contributed to the Burns Place property and contributed misappropriated funds to two other properties bought by her mother as well: a $2.9-million property on Burns Street and a $1.9-million property on Hardwick Street.
'Unjustly enriched'
Crystal Currency is suing Wang and her mother for the return of the alleged misappropriated funds and any profit made on them as well as damages, special damages and punitive damages.
It is also asking for a slew of orders and declarations related to their assets.
The company claims Wang breached her employment contract, defrauded the company and was unjustly enriched.
None of the claims made by the company, Wang or her mother has been tested in court.
A 23-day trial is scheduled starting April 14.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on X/Twitter @CorNaylor
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