Real Estate Licensee Issued Suspension and $14K Fine for Providing False and Misleading Information to BCFSA Investigators

Printed . This content is updated regularly, please refer back to https://bcfsa.ca to ensure that you are relying on the most up-to-date resources.

Yoo Kyung (Ashley) Kim committed professional misconduct when she allowed an unlicensed person to show her buyer clients a property on her behalf, and later provided false information to BCFSA during an investigation.

BC Financial Services Authority has suspended real estate licensee Yoo Kyung (Ashley) Kim (“A Kim”) for six months after she committed professional misconduct for allowing her clients to access a property while unaccompanied by a licensed agent and for providing false or misleading information to BCFSA during its investigation into that misconduct.

A Kim has also been ordered to pay a $10,000 discipline penalty and $4,000 in enforcement expenses and cannot act as an unlicensed assistant while her licence is suspended.

The investigation stemmed from misconduct that occurred in 2021 when A Kim was licensed for real estate trading services with Evergreen West Realty Inc. and was representing buyer clients interested in viewing a property in Langley, B.C. She confirmed the showing request with the seller’s agent, who provided A Kim with keycode access to the property. The seller, who was watching live surveillance camera footage at the time of the showing, notified her agent after observing that A Kim was not with the clients. When the seller texted A Kim asking if she was at the property with clients, A Kim told the seller that she was. A Kim did not respond to the seller’s agent’s attempts to contact her.

A Kim provided misleading information to investigators during several interviews, including initially stating that she was present at the showing with her clients. These statements were disproven by the camera and audio footage of the showing that BCFSA had collected during its investigation. That evidence confirmed A Kim was not present – a male is seen and heard in the footage accompanying the clients, trying to access the property, and describing the property to someone on the phone.

The professional misconduct findings are as follows:

A Kim failed to act with reasonable care and skill when she did not accompany her clients to the property showing;

A Kim failed to act in the best interest of her clients when she allowed an unlicensed person to show her clients the property in her place; and

During BCFSA’s investigation, A Kim provided false or misleading information by providing different statements orally and in writing regarding the property showing, including whether she did or did not attend and her reason for not attending.

“A licensee being dishonest during a BCFSA investigation significantly compounds the severity of the misconduct,” said Raheel Humayun, Director of Investigations at BCFSA. “BCFSA will take additional disciplinary action against individuals that mislead investigators or otherwise fail to cooperate during investigations, and do not conduct themselves in accordance with their clients’ best interests.”