A B.C. judge has frozen the assets of a former Vancouver Canucks draft pick who is being sued over allegations he defrauded a realtor of more than $2.8 million.
Harpreet Singh Khela, the realtor, claims that Prabh Rai, a fifth-round pick in the 2008 NHL draft, created an image that he's a successful and wealthy business person, claiming to have important connections with prominent local and international business people and retired hockey players.
He says that Rai provided phoney emails, financial statements, agreements and documents from those prominent business people and retired professional hockey players in order to get him to transfer more than $2.8 million for real estate developments and other investments.
Khela claims when he tried to get the truth from Rai regarding these investments that Rai came up with a "fantastical" story stating that he was robbed of all his online banking information and had been left penniless.
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It was at this point that Khela began looking more closely at Rai's business ventures, prompting a lawsuit.
Prabh Rai's stories to Khela about the profits earned by their business ventures were a lie.
Prabh Rai told these false stories for the purpose of preventing Khela from commencing legal proceedings to trace and recover the funds that he advanced to Prabh Rai.