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The loan of $2.5 million was advanced in February 2011, and it was to be repaid in May 2011. It was written up to include both a mortgage and a promissory note. If the borrowers repaid the $2.5 million loan in under three months, interest would be waived, the ruling says. But after three months passed, they would owe $3.1 million.

After Huang and Wu took Lim’s loan of $2.5 million and paid it to Chung, Chung left Canada either to Hong Kong or China, the ruling says. Other unidentified property owners also had real estate loans secured on Chung’s two Vancouver properties, the ruling says.

In April 2011, Bill Lim wrote to the borrowers on Lim and Company legal letterhead, reminding them of their coming obligation to repay a “loan in the amount of $3.1 million in favour of Canmerica Mortgage Corporation.”

But Huang and Wu were unable to recover millions in funds they and others had provided to Chung, meaning they could not repay Canmerica the loan due on May 16, 2011.

In court, Lim sought repayment of Canmerica’s loan. But the borrowers claimed that they were victims of a Ponzi scheme, and Lim had taken advantage of them.

“The defendants characterize Bill Lim as being greedy and unscrupulous,” the ruling says. “They say that he took advantage of the desperate situation that the defendants found themselves in, to impose an agreement containing obligations that they had no prospect of satisfying.”

Lim claimed that he had not written up Canmerica’s loan so that it would require interest of more than 60 per cent. But the judge disagreed. The loan, however, did not involve “loan sharking,” the ruling says, because there was “no evidence that Canmerica engaged in any intimidation or coercion.”