When the city of Toronto awarded a contract in 2015 to inspect the fire safety of some of its most public buildings, a city safety manager tried to have a meeting with Dave Daniels, the president of York Fire Protection, who had signed the contract. Seems reasonable enough.The problem was that he didn’t exist. The photo of him on the company website was a stock photo. His biography and professional accomplishments (“senior fire engineer”) had been made up. He was, according to a report by city auditor general Beverly Romeo-Beehler that comes before city council this week, a “fake person.” Strange. And it wasn’t the first time it had happened. In 2011, the city contract for similar fire code inspection work was awarded to Advance Fire Control, and was signed by David Williams. But the manager supervising the contract for the city never met him — he was always out of the office. At one point, the city employee mused to a colleague that he thought Williams was “fictitious.” He was right. Williams too, the auditor reports, was a “fake person.”The auditor confirmed this — after compiling a thick file of evidence including forensic handwriting analysis and professional records searches, and finally “after intense questioning, under oath” — with Rauf Ahmad, the actual owner of both companies. After initially denying it, he admitted both names — and at least four others he has used in his dealings with the city — are “AKAs,” or pseudonyms.Strange. But the auditor’s report just gets stranger — stranger than fictional company owners, stranger than fiction in some places — and more disturbing. In its 144 pages, Romeo-Beehler details the bizarre history of the city’s dealing with Ahmad’s companies. On almost every page there’s something that makes you gasp and shake your head.If you have a taste for the outrageous, it’s ...
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