They were desperate.

That's the common connection between the people who accuse a Hamilton mortgage broker of cheating them of their homes.

So many complaints against Dennis (Dinesh) Khanna, 60, and Metro Financial Planning have poured in that the provincial agency that regulates mortgage brokers has suspended his licence and is moving to put him out of business permanently.

Khanna has dismissed the allegations and said last week he has asked for a hearing. No date has been set.

Randy and Ramona Gallagher are among the people who first thought Metro Financial Planning was like an oasis in the desert, only to find themselves in a lengthy fight to save their home.

"What he does is prey on the weak and vulnerable," Ramona Gallagher claimed in an interview. "We're into $140,000 in legal fees because of this but we're doing it because we want him shut down."

Ramona and her husband Randy went to Khanna for help in 2011. Until that point, the Hamilton couple had a good life — professional careers with good salaries, an investment in a business on the side and a home with a nice amount of equity.

Then a series of bad breaks changed everything: Randy was diagnosed with cancer, Ramona lost her job, and their partner in the side business went bankrupt. They were left with such a pile of debt that they were forced to file a consumer proposal to settle it.

In danger of financial drowning, they saw Khanna's advertisement in The Spectator and asked him to refinance their home to solve their problems. Khanna delivered a $31,000 mortgage with money from a relative. A year later, he brought them a new mortgage, bringing their total debt to $58,000. For that he charged $8,000 in fees and, they claim, assured them they didn't need independent legal advice because he could take care of everything.

Those financial moves didn't really solve their original problems and in May of 2014 they were sued by the mortgage holder after defaulting on the debt. That legal fight drags on as they argue the mortgage should be cancelled because the terms Khanna demanded of them are "unconscionable" under Ontario law.

In their statement of defence, they claim they were never given a proper accounting of what happened to the money advanced under those mortgages or copies of all the documents they signed, as required by law.

"I had to demand all the documents and go and sit in his office until he gave them to me," Ramona alleged.

The mortgage holder rejects their allegations, arguing in a court document the interest rates and administration fees charged are common for a second mortgage.

In his court documents, Khanna says the Gallaghers suffered no damages because of anything he did. In a 2014 interview in his lawyer's office, he said the Gallaghers are only complaining against him to distract attention from their own financial failure.

"They are complainers because they never made the payments," he alleged. "They never made a payment to us even though I paid their proposal, the bankruptcy proposal."

The lawsuit has been stalled until after the Financial Services Commission's proceedings. To date, the Gallaghers are still in their house, but they say the fight has cost them $140,000 in legal and other fees.

Hamilton nurse Janice Abdilla hasn't been able to take her dispute with Khanna to court. She says she lost her home to him in July 2013 and simply can't afford even a small retainer to start a case against him. She is, however, one of the complainants cited in the Financial Services Commission's notice suspending Khanna's licence.

"If I had two pennies to rub together I'd get a lawyer, but every lawyer I talk to wants a $5,000 retainer and I don't have that," she said in an interview in 2014.

Abdilla's financial trouble grew from "the divorce from hell" that left her owing her ex-husband money. As debts piled up, she found Khanna's advertisement online and asked for a small consolidation loan.

That loan grew into a mortgage on her home, with the addition of $5,000 in fees to the total and more when the mortgage was renewed a year later that drove the debt to $40,000. To make the load manageable by consolidating all her debts, Khanna arranged for a $196,000 first mortgage.

Land registry records show two weeks after that pledge was registered, a second mortgage for just over $37,400 was also put against the property, a debt Abdilla says she knew nothing about until she got an eviction notice after the mortgage went into default.

"I went to Dennis looking for a consolidation loan," she said. "The next thing I knew I was getting a notice from the sheriff's office giving me two weeks to get out of my house.

"I walked through his doors in 2012 for a consolidation loan to pull my debts together and, for a $25,000 loan, lost my home," she said.

As with the Gallaghers, Khanna said Abdilla caused her own problems by failing to make payments as required. On her claim a mortgage was registered against her property without her knowledge, Khanna produced papers showing the mortgage had been transferred from one lender to another — an action that doesn't require the homeowner's signature. As for the second mortgage, Khanna offered a blanket rejection of all the allegations made against him.

Both lenders are relatives of Khanna. The Financial Services Commission says title in the property was transferred to Khanna personally in May of last year.

Although Abdilla walked away from her house in 2013, that didn't end her problems. In April of last year, she was sued by the holder of the first mortgage because, according to the Financial Services Commission's notice, "Mr. Khanna had been renting out her property and that title to the property was still in (her) name. It does not appear that Mr. Khanna was making payments on the (first) mortgage."

Abdilla's complaint adds another element the Financial Services Commission cites in its notice — that "a number of the female complainants have alleged that Mr. Khanna made unwanted and inappropriate overtures towards them of a sexual nature."

In the notice, the Financial Services Commission states: "Mr. Khanna made unwanted advances toward her, offering to 'wine and dine' her when her children weren't home. On one occasion Mr. Khanna invited her into the back room of his office and offered her a drink. She declined his offer."

Tony Anker'scase shows another of the allegations made against Khanna — failure to ensure clients are aware of the full details of their mortgages, to account for how money advanced is spent and to provide documents to clients.

In 2010, Anker was living a good life — a $1-million-a-year transport business he'd grown from a single truck to four, a solid marriage, a daughter in university and a country home worth $750,000. It all changed quickly — disputes with the Canada Revenue Agency and a landlord destroyed the business, his wife fell ill and, worst of all, he made the bad decision to buy another expensive home without first selling his existing property.

By the time that home did sell, Anker was in deep financial trouble. That's when Khanna's Spectator advertisement caught his eye.

"I needed something quick and the day I called Dennis he couldn't meet us soon enough," Anker said in an interview.

Anker asked for $120,000 to settle his troubles and Khanna provided $25,000 up front. But Anker alleges he never gave a full report on what happened to the rest of the money from the $110,000 mortgage ultimately registered against Anker's property. All Anker ever received was a handwritten list of payments allegedly made in his name.

Anker said he was never told the interest rate that would apply to the new mortgage, what the payments would be or even how to make them. He admits he "let it slip a bit" and allowed the mortgage to fall into default.

Khanna rejects all those claims, saying $61,700 of the mortgage he arranged for the trucker went to pay an existing pledge, but Anker defaulted on the new debt.

"He never made a payment on it. I made the payments for five or six months," he said. "He had no place to live because his wife threw him out of the house, but I kept the guy alive and kicking."

Part of keeping Anker "alive and kicking," Khanna said, including doling out cash to him while he was living in a motel.

For all of that help, Khanna said, he charged Anker $7,000 in fees, an amount he said was "low" for such a deal.

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Unlike other cases, however, Anker's had a happy ending. With the help of another Hamilton mortgage broker he met at Mission Services, he was able to sell his home for enough to settle his obligations, with a little left over to start a new life.

Howard and Lisa Moore, of Hamilton are another of the cases cited in the Financial Services Commission's notice against Khanna.

Lisa Moore said in an interview her husband approached Khanna for a consolidation loan after being laid off from his trucking job and from there, debts simply piled up.

"Within three months we had zero equity in that house we'd owned for 20 years," she claimed. "He put three mortgages on the property and within three months I got nothing from that house we'd owned for 20 years."

"That's what he does," she alleged. "He preys on vulnerable people like my husband."

After that initial consolidation loan, Lisa Moore said Khanna offered them a new mortgage to settle all their financial troubles. They agreed, only to learn later that two additional mortgages were registered against the property, both in the name of a Khanna relative.

"In fact," the FSCO notice states, they "are not even aware that any amounts under these mortgages were ever advanced."

The commission notes that while Khanna's files contain documents "which purport to be signed" by the Moores, they say they "have no recollection or knowledge of agreeing to the second and third mortgages."

The commission adds that even if those documents are legitimate "which does not appear to be the case," there is nothing in the file showing they were told they were borrowing from a Khanna relative, as required.

When the mortgages the Moores say they didn't know they had went into default, they were sued by the mortgage holder and were eventually told to leave their home. They're still in the house, however, as they fight a lawsuit against Khanna.

"The net effect of the conduct of Metro Financial and Mr. Khanna is that (the Moores) have lost their home and are indebted to the two lenders in respect of which they never agreed to borrow," the Financial Services Commission notice states. "It appears that they enjoyed no benefit from these transactions because there is no evidence that amounts were ever advanced under these mortgages."

The Moores, acting without a lawyer, are suing Khanna and the lender alleging fraud and forgery. They're asking for almost $110,000. Khanna and the lender reject the allegations in a statement of defence and call the suit "an abuse of process."

Khanna added in an interview the couple created their own misfortune.

"As usual these people were behind in payments to a private mortgage holder in Toronto and those people are the meanest things on earth, if you're one day behind with them they're charging you $400 in fees."

To save the couple, Khanna said he arranged first and second mortgages for them, but they again defaulted and eventually walked away from the property.

In a final case cited in the Financial Services Commission's notice, a Stoney Creek woman identified only as S.C. claims she took out a mortgage for $34,000 with Khanna in 2011 only to discover the pledge registered against her property was for almost twice that amount.

The woman was eventually sued by the mortgage holder — Khanna's wife Veeru Kantoor — and gave up the property.

In a telephone interview last week, Khanna called the misconduct allegations "bull----." He also rejected allegations he made advances toward clients.

In addition to the Financial Services Commission's effort to revoke his mortgage broker's licence, Khanna has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman he met in the course of his business. He did not return a call seeking comment about the criminal allegation.

He is to make a first court appearance on that charge Tuesday.

The investigations The Financial Services Commission of Ontario has suspended the mortgage broker licences of Dennis Khanna and that of his business, Metro Financial Planning, and will seek to have them permanently revoked, alleging Khanna committed more than 350 breaches of the industry's rules.

The agency said the investigation continues. The FSCO can be contacted at 416-250-7250, 1-800-668-0128, or email contactcentre@fsco.gov.on.ca.

As for the criminal case in which Khanna is alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman in his King Street West office, Hamilton police believe there may be more alleged victims and ask anyone with information to contact Det. Scott Hamilton at 905-546-3853 or to remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.