Canadian Lawyer

so sketchy is unknown, although at least one early case was the bitterly contested divorce between British businessman Lawrence Sweeney and his socialite wife Louise. One of her lawyers hired White and Johnson to see if they could uncover assets amid Sweeney's labyrinthian corporate holdings. They produced a report saying Sweeney had hidden $3 million in 28 offshore accounts — a claim Sweeney's divorce lawyer, Harold Niman of Niman Zemans Gelgoot LLP, says was fiction. Louise never ended up using this report during the couple's 2002 trial. Still, one of the law firms that briefly worked for Louise on her divorce was Harris + Harris LLP, a small firm based in Mississauga, Ont. This was the same firm where James Edney worked until the summer of 2006, before he joined Blaneys. Harris + Harris was connected to White and Johnson on at least two occasions. One was when they suspected one of their former bookkeepers of stealing from the firm. White and Johnson charged $29,000 to produce a report claiming the woman had secreted the firm's money in the Bahamas, Channel Islands, Hong Kong, Macao, Dubai, and Switzerland. When Greg Harris retained a law firm in Hong Kong to chase down these claims, he learned that "the bank account information provided . . . was non existent." The other case had more serious repercussions. Harris + Harris was hired by three Toronto Catholic School Board employees who used to pool their money and play the 6/49 lottery. In 2004, one of their co-workers, Lorraine Teicht, bought a ticket for the group at a variety store. As it turned out, the ticket was worth nearly $6 million, but it was stolen by the store's owner and Teicht was unaware they had won. Six months later, one of her co-workers discovered the ticket was a winner. White and Johnson were hired to investigate whether Teicht had pocketed the cash. Her co-workers hired Harris + Harris to represent their interests. White and Johnson produced a report saying Teicht had indeed stolen the lottery winnings and stowed the cash offshore. Driven by this false information, Teicht's co-workers harassed her for months, causing Teicht to have two nervous break- downs and other health problems. "I mean she didn't sleep, she didn't eat, you tried to talk to her about it and she would just shut down," recalls her daughter, Tara Teicht. Meanwhile, Teicht's co-workers paid White and Johnson tens of thousands of dollars to hunt down these purported offshore accounts. Finally, in 2007, it was discovered the variety store owner had stolen the ticket. He was charged and imprisoned and that same year, Teicht and the other employees received their lottery winnings. She had little time to enjoy it, though; in 2010 she died of cancer. It seems likely James Edney heard of White and Johnson while working at Harris + Harris and by the summer of 2006, he had a case needing investigative services. Working with Andrew Heal, another Blaneys lawyer, they were representing Joan Montgomery in her divorce from Eric Cunningham. A native of Hamilton, Ont., at 26 Cunningham was elected to the Ontario legislature. In 1980, he and Montgomery were married and eventually had a daughter. The marriage lasted until 2002. By then, Cunningham had left politics and become a successful marketing executive while Montgomery worked for various government agencies, including as a hearings officer with the Immigration and Refugee Board. After Cunningham petitioned for divorce in 2004, the outstanding issues were spousal and child support and the division of marital assets. What made the case more difficult was Montgomery's growing emotional instability (she was forced to leave her job in 2007), which led her to become convinced Cunningham was hiding money — which is how White and Johnson came to be hired. By late October 2006, Internal Affairs had produced a lengthy report suggesting Cunningham had hidden nearly $2.4 million in 18 offshore bank accounts. The report, though, came with an errors and omissions disclaimer, stating: "This report may contain information compiled from a source that the author of this report does not control and whose information, unless otherwise indicated in this report, has not been verified . . . the author of this report . . . does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of unconfirmed information provided by third party sources. . . ." It went on to say a court order would be required to turn the contents into evidence to be used in court and, "Individuals and or their counsel who deal with this information in any other way do so at their own risk." In correspondence that's since come to light as a result of discovery for Cunningham's lawsuit against Blaneys, Edney wrote to Montgomery in October 2006 about the report's findings, saying: "I have no means at my disposal in order to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in the private investigator's report. As such, pending such means being at my disposal (through the crossexamination of Mr. Cunningham or alternatively, the ability to subpoena banks and financial institutions in order to verify same) I will take the information therein as being correct and accurate, save as provided herein. I do wish to stress this fact to you, as it is conceivable that the information contained in the investigator's report is not accurate and has been misstated." OFFSHORE ACCOUNT INFO HARD TO COME BY T o people familiar with the world of offshore banking, the White and Johnson report should have raised red flags. For one thing, Blaneys had not gone through the usual process of legally accessing offshore accounts — which involves obtaining a court order in Canada after furnishing evidence, hiring a lawyer, and obtaining a court order in a foreign jurisdiction, and then going to the overseas bank in question with the orders. Moreover, banks don't hand over, in the absence of court rulings, reams of detailed account information to perfect strangers willy-nilly, especially in this post-Sept. 11-privacy law age. "I never retain investigators to find offshore accounts," notes Philip Epstein. "From long experience I knew it was impossible to do that." When Harry Lake, a veteran corporate private investigator who owns Toronto-based Introspec Investigations Inc., was asked about whether White and Johnson's offshore banking details should www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m October 2013 29

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