British Columbia real estate agent who allowed strangers into home without licensed supervision, then lied when asked about it later, faces $14,000 fine and suspension of six months.

Yoo Kyung (Ashley) Kim admitted to the 2021 misconduct in a proposed consent order submitted to the BC Financial Services Authority, which was posted on its website on October 16.

The document details how Kim, a licensed real estate agent with Evergreen West Realty Inc. in Coquitlam, was representing clients interested in property in Langley when she let her husband pose as a real estate agent in her place. During an investigation into the incident, Kim provided misleading information to investigators during “several interviews,” the BCFSA said.

During the visit in May 2021, the owner of the property noticed that Kim had disappeared while monitoring a home surveillance camera attached to the front door. Rather than Kim welcoming her guests – a couple and two children – into the house, it was a stranger.

According to the consent order, when the seller texted Kim asking if she was home with the customers, Kim insisted that she was, but asked the customer to open the door for her. the door.

The seller’s agent attempted to Facetime Kim, but was ignored.

The document described how the seller, then already close to the house, drove by the property to check if Kim was there and arrived as the family was pulling out of their driveway.

The salesman had stopped them and asked to speak to Kim. The woman in the car had said she was Kim, but when the salesman looked her up online, the woman she saw and the woman listed online as Kim did not match.

In a telephone interview with BCFSA, “Kim confirmed that she was with her buyer clients at the property during the viewing and that she had let her buyer clients into the property,” the statement reads. document.

When the BCFSA informed Kim that there was surveillance video showing her absence during the showing, “Kim stated that her husband, not licensed to provide real estate services, had let his buyer clients into the property, and that She herself was in the car because she was ill. COVID,” we can read.

In the consent order, Kim admitted committing professional misconduct by failing to “act with reasonable care and skill” by failing to accompany clients to view the property.

Kim had also “failed to act in the best interests of his clients” by allowing an unlicensed person to provide real estate services and had “provided false or misleading information by providing various oral and written statements regarding the property,” including whether or not she attended and the reason for her absence, it read.

“A dishonest licensee during a BCFSA investigation significantly escalates the severity of the misconduct,” Raheel Humayun, BCFSA director of investigations, said in a press release on the case.

“BCFSA will take additional disciplinary action against individuals who mislead investigators or who fail to cooperate during investigations and conduct themselves in accordance with the best interests of their clients.

As punishment for his misconduct, Kim agreed to have his license suspended for six months. She also agreed to pay a disciplinary penalty of $10,000 to the BCFSA within three months of the date of the consent order, as well as an enforcement fee of $4,000 within two months of the date of the consent order. consent order.