Ex-lawyer admits fraud

Multiple mortgages on houses

Forging a dead man’s signature on legal documents helped lead to the undoing of a former Cochrane lawyer who managed to obtain more than $1 million in phoney mortgages.

In 2008 and 2009, Nicola Alexandra Davis spun a web of fraudulent real estate and financial transactions to cover her mounting financial debts.

On Wednesday, Davis, 47, pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud over $5,000 and three counts of obtaining credit by fraud for a series of deceptions — which included forging the signature of her boyfriend’s late father so she could take ownership of the deceased man’s $330,000 home on Glenhill Drive in Cochrane.

Davis conducted the phoney transaction — transferring the house’s title to herself for the nominal sum of $1 — while helping her boyfriend prepare his father’s will, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court by Crown prosecutor Steve Johnston.

But the sister of Davis’s boyfriend discovered the illegal sale in August 2009 and called the police.

Ultimately, authorities discovered Davis had swindled hundreds of thousands of dollars from several lenders.

In one case, Davis remortgaged a home on Chinook Drive in Cochrane through a private lender for $325,000 in 2008 — but did so by forging a document stating she had paid off the existing $609,000 mortgage.

Davis obtained a third mortgage for $229,000, again by forging a document stating the previous loan was paid.

The prosecution estimated the three lenders lost nearly $1 million combined on the Chinook Drive house.

“Had they been aware they were, in fact, the second or third mortgage on the property, they would not have advanced funds,” Johnston said.

At the time of the offences, Davis had been suspended by the Law Society of Alberta for unrelated professional infractions and was unable to practise.

“She continued to need money,” Johnston said, adding Davis was ultimately disbarred in 2011.

While under suspension, a “miscommunication” between the law society and the land titles office allowed Davis to continue filing phoney documents and get more money, Johnston told the court.

At the same time Davis was getting successive mortgages on the Chinook Drive house in Cochrane, she forged a document giving her power of attorney over her former husband’s affairs and obtained a $900,000 mortgage for a home on Wentworth Crescent S.W. in Calgary.

Davis then got approval for a second, $595,000 mortgage on the house by producing fake documents stating the first loan was paid.

The second mortgage ultimately didn’t go through, but Johnston said Davis’s action placed nearly $1.5 million in jeopardy.

Johnston said Davis told RCMP investigators after her arrest that she was being blackmailed because of an illicit relationship.

The case is scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Feb. 1.