Golnaz Vakili’s decision to run, with $5,000 in cash and a bag stuffed with yoga pants and purses, came seemingly without warning one night last year.

The 33-year-old Toronto lawyer left handwritten notes for her loved ones, confessing she was stressed to the breaking point but offering few clues as to why she abandoned her practice, her husband, and her family.

“I’m so sorry to leave in this manner, so suddenly and without a goodbye, but I could not stay a minute longer without completely breaking down,” Vakili wrote in a letter left for her parents last March.

“I am facing obstacles and challenges in which I am completely out of my element and outside my area of knowledge in the field. I am getting crushed under the strain and I am worried about the impact this is going to have on my family.”

Vakili’s husband found the letter on their kitchen table the night she left. It went on to say she would be safe in Europe.

Within a month of her abrupt departure, Vakili would be named in a massive civil suit alleging she was a central figure in a sophisticated mortgage scheme investors believe could be worth as much as $17 million. The courts froze her accounts and the law society suspended her licence. Then Toronto police charged her with fraud in absentia and issued a warrant for her arrest.

This is a story about missing millions, stately mansions on the Bridle Path, broken business relationships and an alleged death threat. It features a cast of characters operating in the world of real estate and private loans. Among them is Vakili, a promising young lawyer now on the lam; a businessman who bought the largest home in Canada and who in the past has been charged with several violent crimes though never convicted; his former business associate — a wealthy woman who accuses both of them of defrauding her family — and a shell-shocked husband searching for answers.

The Star was first contacted by Vakili in February after we reached out to her family.

In a series of phone calls and emails — from an account using the name of the famous criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow in its address and registered to the name of French philosopher Blaise Pascal — Vakili swears she is innocent and made no profit from the alleged scheme.

“If somebody told you I will give you five million or 10 million but you know you are going to throw away your dreams and ambitions I would never take it,” she says, her voice travelling through a crackling phone line that cuts off intermittently.

The decision to flee, she says, was not made because she has something to hide.

“I did not feel safe speaking to authorities,” she says, adding that she kept her family in the dark “because I did not want them to be dragged into this and pose a security threat for them.” Vakili, agitated and emotional during the calls, is always vague when asked why she ran.

“I have become paranoid since this situation happened. Ultimately, obviously people you think are good and honest turn out to be the devil incarnate.”

She refuses to say where she is and whether she has been threatened in any way, though her family, who is convinced of her innocence, believes it’s the only explanation.

“I think she is trying to protect us in any shape or form that she can,” says her husband, Mehdi Shabestary. He says he has had barely any contact with his wife since she left.

In the summer of 2009,it seemed like the best years ofGolnaz Vakili’s life were ahead of her. She had married Shabestary, her high school sweetheart, in a small midnight ceremony at the Scarborough Bluffs, where they first kissed as teenagers. A more formal party the next day, for friends and their large Iranian-Canadian families, was held at the Liberty Grand. Pictures of the day show Vakili beaming in the intricate dress she had picked out just two weeks before.

The following year, after earning an undergraduate degree in international relations from York University, a master’s degree and then a law degree from a joint Windsor-Detroit Mercy University program, she was called to the bar. A month later, she opened her own practice in North York.

Vakili says she chose to open a private practice because it made her more accountable.

“I just don’t seem to have the same results when I’ve got somebody constantly looking over my shoulder.”

She had ambitions to get into criminal law, then the International Criminal Court, but chose to focus on real estate law until she and Shabestary, an engineer, had become financially stable.

Her goal was to “make a respected name” for herself.

What’s left to show of Vakili’s first two years as a lawyer is a mess of investigations and court cases in Toronto and Milton, including the massive lawsuit filed by a handful of companies led by businesswoman Tova Markovzki (she goes by the surname Marks), her husband, daughter and a family friend. That case, which the Star has come to call “the Marks case,” alleges that Vakili and others schemed to defraud them of as much as $17 million and that Vakili forged documents, including postal receipts for an important package that was never mailed, and was seen shredding papers in her office.

The Marks case alleges there are a variety of schemes. One of them allegedly worked like this: A businessman named Arash Missaghi, his associate, Grant Erlick, and Vakili convinced Marks and her family’s network of companies to make large loans, largely in the form of second mortgages, to people who pretended to own luxury homes.

The “homeowners” used fake identification and posed as self-employed Iranian businesspeople who claimed to have trouble borrowing money from the bank, according to the statement of claim in the case. It also states Marks and her family were provided with counterfeit mortgage and bogus title insurance documents that made it seem like the transaction was insured against fraud.

Vakili was Marks’ lawyer on the deals and the money was deposited into a trust account she controlled, the claim alleges. It also says Vakili hid the fact that some properties already had multiple mortgages and failed to register some of the new ones.

The Marks case also maintains that many of the nearly 30 properties detailed in the claim were “owned or controlled by” Missaghi and Erlick and this was how the group kept, got a cut of or distributed all or some of the loaned money that improperly left Vakili’s account.

Vakili, Missaghi and Erlick have told the Star the accusations are false.

Vakili insists that in each case she was following client instructions.

“I would never, ever, ever help anybody commit any sort of fraud.”

The rookie lawyer was working out of an executive office suite filled with lawyers at Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave. in 2011. The 24-storey tower was also the location of an office used by Missaghi.

Vakili had been there for less than a year when a lawyer named Norman Silver, who had worked with Missaghi in the past, introduced the pair.

“I unfortunately got Golnaz involved,” Silver says in a recent interview. He says it is possible she was “duped” by someone.

Missaghi introduced Vakili to Marks during a lunch at the upscale Oliver and Bonacini restaurant at Bayview Village Mall. Not long after, Vakili began to work with Marks as her lawyer, an arrangement that lasted until early 2013.

Vakili insists she was a careful and honest lawyer, but by early 2012 she was being sued in an Ontario Superior Court case by a mortgage lending firm called MCAP over allegations that she, Erlick and companies linked to or controlled by Missaghi were involved in a transaction where more than $300,000 was transferred to accounts connected to Missaghi in “breach of trust.”

Justice Douglas Gray, a senior judge in Milton, wrote in an endorsement that “prima facie” (at first appearance) Vakili was “instrumental” in a case he said “smacks of fraud.” When ordering Vakili to produce accounting records, he wrote: “To date, no one has disclosed where the missing funds are.”

When asked about the MCAP suit, which was settled in April 2012, Missaghi questioned Gray’s grasp of the case.

“The judges (in Milton) have no understanding whatsoever when it comes to mortgage enforcement,” Missaghi said of Gray, who has since presided over a handful of other ongoing cases stemming from the Marks allegations.

Things really began to unravel in January 2013, when the lawyer for a different alleged victim of mortgage fraud told Vakili his client had instructed him to report her to the Law Society of Upper Canada and the police. In that case, filed in a Toronto court, a woman named Lorraine Fusco accused Vakili and Missaghi of defrauding her of almost half a million dollars.

(The judge later ordered Vakili and Missaghi to pay Fusco $1.2 million, a default judgment made after she fled. Neither Missaghi, who said he intends to fight the judge’s decision, nor Vakili filed a statement of defence.)

Questions from Marks’ family came the following month after a loan was due to be paid.

According to allegations in the Marks case that was filed in court last April, the borrower wasn’t paying up and Vakili wasn’t taking steps to recover the money. Marks’ daughter, Segal Adler (also known as Cindy), who controls one of the companies in her family’s network, wanted to hire another lawyer, but Vakili “pleaded” and gave Adler postal receipts to prove she had mailed a document stating the house would be sold to settle the debt. Adler contacted Canada Post and was told the receipts were “not real.”

Marks and her family then scoured their records and “uncovered a massive, highly sophisticated fraud,” according to court documents.

Two weeks later, on March 14, a law society investigator showed up at Vakili’s then vacant office and placed calls to her home.

Vakili fled the next day, according to her husband.

The law society moved swiftly, asking the courts to control her accounts.

During an April hearing, it suspended her licence, reasoning that if Vakili was allowed to continue practising law there were “reasonable grounds for believing there is a significant harm to members of the public.”

An investigator with the society, who focused on three luxury properties listed in the Marks case, concluded Vakili “did provide fraudulent documents,” according to the investigator’s affidavit filed as part of the hearing. It does not say who created the fake documents.

Documents from the hearing also noted, “This is unlikely to be a scheme that a new lawyer devised herself, given its size and complexity.”

In November 2013, investigators with Toronto police’s financial crimes unit charged Vakili with fraud, perjury and using a forged document. A warrant was issued for her arrest. (She is the only one charged criminally in relation to the alleged scheme at this point).

The lead investigator has been asking questions of Vakili’s family. He declined a request to speak with the Star. Police will say only that their investigation is “ongoing” and “multi-jurisdictional.”

Vakili’s criminal lawyer in Toronto, Steven Skurka, says his client “has insisted from afar that she has a very different story to tell.”

What happened to the money that went into Vakili’s account from several deals is what everyone — all the players involved, the cops, the courts and the law society — is chasing.

Marks and her network of companies are represented by Chaitons, a well-known North York firm. Marks’ lawyer, Doug Bourassa, said his client would not be commenting and is “pursuing her remedies through the courts.”

It appears that their current legal strategy is to break the original lawsuit into pieces.

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In one suit launched last October, Marks’ lawyers took aim at a commercial building on Steeles Ave. in Vaughan. The case claims a $1.25-million mortgage was transferred fraudulently by Vakili to a company controlled by Missaghi without getting permission from Marks, whose company “received no compensation” for her mortgage loan, according to her affidavit. Missaghi says Marks was paid what she was owed. The matter is back in court on June 26.

In January, in a statement filed in a suit dealing with the home of Missaghi’s parents, Bahram Azizbeiki, one of the “homeowners” who worked for Missaghi, said he was coached in 2011 by Missaghi and Erlick to pretend he needed a $1.45-million loan from Marks to buy a Bridle Path mansion.

The statement, given under oath, says Missaghi directed him to sign papers on several occasions at Vakili’s office, where he was given no explanation of what he was signing. Azizbeiki also said he believes Missaghi “was and continues to be the mastermind behind all of the illegal transactions” and that he once made a “direct threat” on his life by saying “we shot the witness while he was going up the stairs in court.”

(The Star has found no evidence of a witness being shot on or near court stairs in Ontario. Missaghi says Azizbeiki’s death threat claim is false, made after a failed extortion, and that he reported him to the police. Erlick also told the Star Azizbeiki’s claims about him are false. He said that allegations stemming from the Marks case are “riddled with errors,” that his “above board” role was primarily property management, and that he’s been dragged into the feud because of his relationship with Missaghi.)

In late February, with help from the provincial sheriff, Missaghi’s parents were evicted from their Richmond Hill home.

Four days later, Missaghi texted Marks’ daughter Cindy Adler: “You want a war you got it,” he said, according to an affidavit from Adler, in which she says she found the text “frightening” and reported it to the police as a threat. (Missaghi denies ever sending the text.)

Just last month, Justice Gray ordered Missaghi’s parents’ home to be sold to give Adler money owed after mortgage payments weren’t received.

Gray wrote he found it suspicious that the homeowners were related to or connected to people “involved in transactions that appear to be fraudulent.”

“It is time to put an end to the game-playing and get the property sold,” he said.

Missaghi is adamant he’s committed no crime and has received no money. He says he does not know what happened and that the fight should be between Marks, Vakili, the law society and the insurance company that covers lawyers.

For starters, Missaghi claims the alleged fraud doesn’t add up to $17 million because most of the properties have registered mortgages and that only the loans on a few properties, totalling about $5 million, are questionable.

He says his family’s network of companies here and abroad has a net worth of approximately $300 million and that wealth has made him a target.

“I don’t need four (or) five million dollars. My house is (worth) 20 million dollars. I have the largest home in Canada, up north,” he says, referring to the 65,000-square-foot compound in Haileybury, Ont., that belonged to forest titan Peter Grant. Missaghi claimed bankruptcy in 2000. He says he was discharged the next year.

Missaghi, 43, says that during his roughly 20-year working relationship with Marks he has made her a great deal of money.

He describes Marks, along with her fellow plaintiffs, as “sophisticated” and experienced, but went on to say “maybe they don’t have the sophistication to understand what they are alleging.”

“To hold somebody to fraud is a very high threshold held in the court of law,” he says, adding he’s ready to defend himself. In an affidavit filed shortly after the original suit was launched last April, Missaghi calls the allegations of fraud “false, misleading and scandalous” and designed to damage his business relationships.

Missaghi says he doesn’t know if Vakili is innocent.

“The face that I saw of that woman, I can’t see her doing any wrongdoing,” unless she was coerced or misled, he says.

During an interview with the Star at his office and later on the phone, Missaghi doesn’t flinch, even when pressed about his lengthy list of criminal charges, some for violence and others for fraud. In the early 2000s he was charged several times for threats to cause bodily harm, sexual assault and assault using a shoe, belt and door, all against the same woman, according to court records. In that case Missaghi says a woman he refused to marry lied to the police.

In 2009, Missaghi and Erlick were charged together with uttering a threat to cause bodily harm to a man and conspiring to commit murder and arson. (The charges were withdrawn and both men say it never happened.) And in 2010, Missaghi was charged with uttering a threat to cause death to a different woman. He promised not to communicate with the woman, who also claimed in a civil case that he defrauded her of $2 million to $3 million in connection to the same Steeles Ave. property named in the Marks case. The case is ongoing. Missaghi maintains the allegations are lies.

Missaghi has never been convicted of any crime, according to documents obtained by the Star from several GTA courthouses. The threats, in both cases, were made by people who stole from or threatened him and tried to exploit the justice system to get revenge, he said.

Dressed in an Armani baseball cap, sweatshirt and jeans, Missaghi calmly says that if people fear him it’s not because he’s “a dangerous person” but “because I can probably put them in the poorhouse.”

Back in 2006, Missaghi was rounded up in a joint-forces police investigation called Project Tic Toc that turned up guns, drugs and stolen property as well as several alleged mortgage and insurance frauds. A total of 23 people faced 138 charges.

Missaghi was charged with fraud. Those charges were withdrawn a year later at the request of the Crown.

“This is police. This is their style ... where they see smoke they say ‘Let’s just charge everybody, let the judge decide where it goes,’” he says, adding he was targeted because of associations. He gives the same explanation for charges of theft and fraud in 1999, which included the alleged theft of large shipments of tomatoes and pineapples.

When asked if he believes Vakili has any reason to fear for her safety, Missaghi says he doesn’t think so.

“If I knew of her whereabouts I would convince her to come back. A lot of (this) nonsense could be put to rest.”

Vakili lies awake at night, “tossing and turning over how my life could have gone so awry,” she says.

“Mentally, I’m in a really bad place. I joke around and I laugh but that’s just my nature and that’s how I get through my day.”

She has heard the rumours swirling around Toronto’s Iranian community — that she ran away with her accountant, or took a $5-million cut.

Vakili is adamant she is not sitting on a beach somewhere, sipping a cocktail, but is instead struggling to make ends meet teaching English and French.

She has adopted stray cats and dogs, but says she hasn’t made any friends.

“I couldn’t even picture going out and having fun because it’s just not right. I’ve affected so many people, it’s weighing on me,” she says.

Her mother, Nassrine, calls the last year a “nightmare” filled with unrelenting anxiety — so much so that she takes sleeping pills every night. She and her husband, Bijan, fled Iran’s revolution in the early 1980s so that their children could have more opportunities, she explains, sitting at her dining room table in her modest North York home.

“What happened to my daughter is like a movie, a Hollywood movie,” she says of her child, who she says worked hard all her life and didn’t covet expensive things but instead wore sweaters with holes in the sleeves.

In the weeks before she left, Vakili complained of problems with her bank account, working until 4 a.m., missing family meals and pulling away, says Nasrine, who believes her whole family is in danger.

“I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but inside me I want to tell everything,” she says without elaborating.

Shabestary, Vakili’s husband, says about two months ago investigators from Toronto police’s financial crimes unit asked him about Missaghi and Erlick and told him “a lot of people are involved.”

Over a recent coffee, Shabestary looks tired, his face is drawn. There are moments when he doesn’t want to see anybody, or go to work, but he tries to make the best of each day.

“We had lots of hopes for our future ... I know what kind of person she is,” he says.

“I love her and support her. That’s all. With everything I have. To the end of it, I know she is innocent.”

With files from Toronto Star library staff

Jayme Poisson can be reached at (416) 814-2725 or jpoisson@thestar.ca