Wife of Toronto shooter says two victims defrauded their family's savings

TORONTO — The gunman in a fatal shooting in Toronto earlier this week believed the two victims had defrauded his family, his wife said Wednesday, as court records indicate the family was suing the two men after having lost more than a million Canadian dollars in an alleged investment scam.

A man and a woman were shot and an attacker also died Monday in a north Toronto office near a daycare.

In a statement released by her lawyers, Alisa Pogorelovsky said her husband, Alan Kats, who also died in the shooting, “could not bear to lose our savings and that is what led to this tragic event.”

“I hope one day my family can recover,” she wrote.

Police identified the victims of Monday's shooting as Arash Missaghi, 54, and Samira Yousefi, 44, but did not identify the 46-year-old shooter.

Court records detail how Pogorelovsky and her husband sued the two people killed in the shooting, as well as others, after losing C$1.28 million (US$930,000) in an alleged syndicated mortgage fraud.

The allegations against Missaghi and Yousefi have not been proven in court.

Missaghi was indicted in 2018 for his alleged role in an elaborate mortgage fraud scheme valued at C$17 million (US$12.4 million), a police investigation dubbed Project Bridle Path.

“The events that gave rise to the litigation in which we are involved with Missaghi and Yousefi have devastated and now destroyed our family,” Pogorelovsky’s statement said.

He said she found a note after the shooting written by her husband, explaining “what he was thinking and why he acted the way he did.”

The shooting Monday afternoon in Toronto's North York neighborhood took place at a business that conducts “financial transactions,” police said.