As Mississauga-based iPro Realty. Ltd. shuttered its 17 branches on Tuesday after being found to have mishandled millions of dollars, Real Estate Council of Ontario issued an update to address some of the many questions stemming from the shocking events affecting 2,400 agents.
The closure follows the discovery of a $10.5-million shortfall in the company’s consumer deposit and commission trust accounts during a scheduled inspection. The amount has since declined to less than $8 million.
“This is a serious breach of iPro’s responsibilities under the law and to its consumers and agents. RECO’s approach has been to recover the greatest amount of trust money possible to protect the maximum amount of funds for consumers and agents,” said Tuesday’s advisory.
iPro’s co-founders Rui Alves and Fedele Colucci are permanently barred from trading real estate.
About brokerage inspections
RECO completes more than 1,000 brokerage inspections each year, said RECO. Brokerages have historically been inspected approximately once every four years.
“RECO completed an inspection of iPro in 2021,” it said. “An inspection of iPro had been scheduled for late May 2025, however, the owners notified RECO of the shortfall immediately before the inspection.”
Police involvement
RECO said it has been in contact with Peel Regional Police regarding the funds missing from iPro, “and will cooperate with any investigation.”
As of right now, a criminal investigation has not commenced.
Agent commissions
iPro cannot pay out commissions until the brokerage is closed and a full accounting of outstanding commissions is completed and then assessed against potential insurance coverage, said RECO.
All iPro agents with outstanding commissions are advised to file an insurance claim.
Insurance process
While RECO continues its analysis, the insurance program is assessing coverage.
“Once the brokerage closes, a full accounting will be completed as soon as possible,” said RECO.
The total amount of insurance coverage for consumer deposits and commissions is up to $8 million in aggregate ($4 million for each) with an additional limit of $200,000 per individual, per claim (not per transaction).
Transfer fees waived for iPro agents
iPro agents must transfer to a new brokerage to maintain their registration, and have been advised they can transfer to any registered brokerage in Ontario.
“RECO is facilitating the transfer of registrations to any brokerage and will be doing a bulk transfer of the agents wanting to be transferred to iCloud,” it said.
“To support agents during the transition, RECO will either waive or reimburse transfer fees, including for those agents who may have transferred from iPro to iCloud and wish to transfer to a new brokerage in the coming weeks,” said RECO.
Details on iCloud
Last week, RECO confirmed that iCloud has purchased some of iPro’s assets and assumed some of its leases, however, there has been no transfer of ownership from iPro to iCloud.
A search of RECO’s registrants shows iCloud’s broker of record is Christopher Regimbal, who was a broker/manager with iPro. iCloud Realty was registered earlier this month.
“The broker of record at iCloud is a former employee of iPro; there is no evidence that this individual was involved in any wrongdoing,” said RECO. “As broker of record, he will be responsible and accountable for the operations of the brokerage in compliance with the law.”
RECO added that it “will closely monitor the operations of iCloud, as it does with the operation of any new brokerage.”
It’s a start. But insufficient. There are still numerous unanswered questions not addressed.
Why was RECO not transparent from the start?
Did iPro propose the iCloud brokerage before or after they admitted to the shortfall?
Why did it take RECO 4 months to issue the advisory?
When did RECO suspend the registrations of the owners when they were still showing as registered on the morning of Aug 19?
Are there additional purchase funds forthcoming and of so, how much and are they pledged to RECO to cover the shortfall?
What is the breakdown of the trust shortfall by deposit due: back to the seller/lease for overages or deals that will not close; for HST; buyer rebates and commissions?
When was the trust first made deficient? Is there not an annual trust account reporting?
Why is it not more frequent?
1000 brokerages a year audit every four years means only 4000 brokerages are audited. At Dec. 31, 2024 there were 3,816 brokerages and 2,370 branch offices. RECO has a what 4 or 5 auditors? How effective are those audits?
When did RECO last audit the brokerages of all of its past directors who was an owner of their brokerage
What are you doing about the appearance of a conflict of interest with your chairperson and her husband who is a director and in-coming president of the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board? RECO’s conflict of interest by-law is clear, it prohibits a director from being a director of a related association. How is this different?
There is much speculation about why RECO opted to bulk transfer agents to iCloud.Was it to facilitate the transfer of those who wished to transfer or, those who were not aware of the matter or, those who were still undecided and did the owners negotiate this with RECO?
Lastly there is an accusation circulating in social media alleging that other iPro manager of creating other brokerages, is it true or baseless?
You’ve raised some very thoughtful questions. It’s clear that more clarity and communication would go a long way in helping professionals and the public feel confident that the right safeguards are in place.
We need s 100% audit of EVERY brokerage in Ontario IMMEDIATELY. The Province should fire Reco board and take over contfol.
In 2021 all in house inspections were cancelled. A covid modified inspection was done in which files were sent into Reco. It would have been easy to be sneaky
We need s 100% audit of EVERY brokerage in Ontario IMMEDIATELY. The Province should fire Reco board and take over contfol.
RECO & OREA board of Directors all need to be replaced. OREA for their insurance scam – charging all Realtors with insurance that enriches only the Insurance company and someone from OREA and now RECO for allowing $10million dollars to go missing from Trust Accounts! How disgraceful! Everyone involved in stealing money from home buyers (deposits from Agreements of Purchase and Sale) which are supposed to be in TRUST accounts, and the money stolen from Real Estate Agents (commission Trust account) when a deal closes, should all be investigated, removed from their post until the investigation clears them or finds them guilty. When found guilty, they should be charged, and fined (prison if they can’t pay back). These people worked with an accountant that allowed the funds to be misappropriated – stolen, why is that not included? Are there others involved in the grand deceitful act?
RECO has not been fully and sufficiently transparent with this matter. Criminal charges must be considered in this matter. ICloud must be fully investigated, it seems the new owners and brokers are all Ipro past agents ???? There’s a lot here to be investigated.
Rui Alves was formerly a board member of RECO and has close ties to RECO executives.
I’m waiting for all the facts to be made public.
Changes will ensure the public and registrants are better served and protected.
A separate trust account should have been created the minute RECO found out about the shortfall in May. iPro’s 2,400 agents continued operating in the normal course until the August 14th notification of the August 19th wind up. I would never have allowed funds to be deposited into iPro’s trust account in early August had I known of the breach. Now I am in the position of embarrassment with my Client, and the middle of an insurance claim.
Hot on the heels of the Calgary guy’s short-term loan investment scheme. Sad situation. Deposits supposed to be iron clad locked door trust. Has there been any audit on the to-and-fro of actual deposit money? e.g. external float account bearing interest / some kind of loan set-up. What about brokerage admin/bank tracing? Curious, were there any shortfalls on deposits for completed deals?
Reco knew that iPro was in trouble. Reco worked with iPro to rescue it by creating İCloud Realty so that there was less public exposure and noice and 2400 agents had a place to go. Like myself, it was too fast and too confusing as my trust to Reco and iCloud vanished. Why did Reco not disclose iPro’s trouble earlier? İPro charged me a monthly fee of Aug 2025. By knowing that they would bankrupt, they went ahead and took my money and Reco allowed that. As an agent, l lost my trust to Reco. Reco has very strict rules when it comes to agents. For example, if an agent’s name is written bigger than the brokerage on their signs, there is penalty. Reco must restore the trust of the agents as well as the public in order to resume the trusted real estate business in Canada. They must be transparent. They must protect agents and public. They must prove that it has put a new ways of workings to ensure this never happens again, ever.
Absolutely should have shut it down the second they knew about the fraud and charged the fraudsters!!!
There are many questions that need answers both to the public and all of Reco’s registrants. Reco is very strict with registrants and along with the home board, OREA and CREA all ensure that their Code of Ethics are strictly followed. Reco, in particular, should strive to follow their own code to the tee as including in disclosing their findings on IPRO “at the earliest time possible” and ensuring that honesty, fairness, and integrity is seen to be present in all evaluations and remedies. This is one of, if not the largest, misappropriation of funds in Reco’s investigations. Yet no charges have been brought by Reco against anyone…. yet. Perhaps that will change now, let’s see.
Perhaps it is time for the overseeing of Brokers and Registrants to be handed back to a Provincial Government Agency.