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In a cautionary tale about lending money to friends, especially when you are a multimillion-dollar lottery winner, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled a $600,000 loan isn’t collectible because the two parties never signed an agreement and the lawsuit trying to get the money back was filed too late to enforce.

Almost as soon as former nanny Enone Rosas won $4.163 million in the Lotto 6/49 on Jan. 6, 2007, her friend, Isabel Toca, was at her side asking for a loan to help her buy a house. Within four days Rosas had given Toca a bank draft for $630,000, of which $30,000 was to be a gift and the rest an interest-free loan that the two agreed would be repaid within a year.

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Toca used most of the money to buy a house at 4625 Dumfries for $700,000. Every year until 2013 she promised Rosas she would repay the loan “next year,” but she never did.

In the end, Rosas inadvertently made her former friend a lottery winner, too, in a way. In the nearly 10 years since Toca and her husband bought the east Vancouver house, it has risen dramatically in value. The B.C. Assessment Authority estimated this summer that it was worth more than $1.3 million.