The amounts being clawed back from investors who were “winners” in an alleged $300-million Ponzi scheme are being slashed almost in half from initial estimates, after those “winners” were given an opportunity to dispute the initial calculations of bankruptcy trustee PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. (PwC).
In June 2025, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that investors who were “winners” in the Ponzi scheme that was carried out through My Mortgage Auction Corp. (MMAC) must pay back their profits to the firm administering MMAC’s insolvency.
Soon after, PwC began the process of calculating the amounts that winners would be required to return to the estate of MMAC, so that those funds could be distributed to investors that lost money to the scheme.
The trustee’s initial estimate was that $71 million would be clawed back from investors.
It originally estimated that there were 561 winners from the scheme, who received a combined $71.3 million in returns before the scheme collapsed — while more than 1,200 investors lost an estimated $149 million.
Now, having considered investors’ objections to the initial calculations — 425 of the 561 “winners” filed disputes — the trustee expects to recover $36 million from these investors.
The revised estimate comes after the trustee was able to revise its analysis based on more detailed financial information from the “winners”.
“Typically, the additional information allowed the trustee to re-assign transactions to the recipients based on their investment contracts which led to adjustments in the clawback amounts for individual recipients,” PwC said.
At this point, 221 of the winners have agreed to repay a combined $16 million, the trustee reported. So far, $5.2 million of this has been repaid by 151 of those investors, which have now fully paid back their “winnings”.
Another 70 investors have entered repayment agreements, and the trustee said that it’s also continuing to work with 24 other investors to finalize settlement agreements.
In cases where agreements can’t be reached, the court will be asked to determine the amounts that must be repaid — a meeting has been set for Aug. 12 to schedule a hearing for many of those cases.
Additionally, the trustee has begun the collection process on $8.6 million worth of judgments against investors that didn’t reach a deal with the trustee, or engage in the dispute process.