B.C. immigration and real estate lawyer disbarred for 3rd time

A British Columbia lawyer who once ran to become mayor of Richmond has again been declared "ungovernable" and disbarred for a third time by a Law Society of B.C. panel.

Hong Guo, an immigration and real estate lawyer based in Richmond, was previously disbarred in November 2023 when the law society said she was incapable of rehabilitating her professional conduct.

She was disbarred for a second time in February of this year.

Guo did not attend her latest hearing in June of this year, nor did she respond to numerous attempts by the panel to contact both her and her sister "MG," according to the decision.

In its conclusion, the panel said Guo showed "repetitive, protracted and serious" misconduct, and "cannot be trusted to be accurate or show any insight into her behaviour."

"After more than a decade of misconduct and wasted opportunities to illustrate reform, it is clear that the Law Society cannot fulfil its statutory mandate to uphold and protect the administration of justice while also maintaining [Guo] as a member," it reads. 

She is not the first lawyer in B.C. to have faced multiple disbarments. In 2022, Aaron Murray Lessing was disbarred for a third time and the law society acknowledged in the decision that the measure was largely symbolic.

A 2021 tribunal found Guo enabled a bookkeeper to steal $7.5 million in client trust funds between 2014 and 2016 by providing pre-signed blank trust cheques to the bookkeeper when she went on vacation. 

The 2021 panel also found she misappropriated other clients' money to replace the missing funds in order to complete real estate transactions. 

The most recent law society decision says Guo started practising out of her own law firm in Richmond in 2010.

It says her professional conduct record goes back to 2012 and notes a long list of citations, professional misconduct findings, disciplinary actions and conduct reviews. 

The panel fined Guo $13,000, only a fraction of what it cost to hold the tribunal. That's in addition to two earlier fines levelled by the law society amounting to $93,000.

In a somewhat related matter, a warrant for Guo's arrest was issued in May of this year after she failed to show up for a contempt of court sentencing hearing related to a real estate lawsuit in which she was a named defendant.

At the hearing, Guo's son, Howard Chen, told B.C. Supreme Court Justice G.C. Weatherill that his mother had travelled to Beijing sometime in 2023 to pursue "business opportunities," while also claiming she was suffering from depression, sleep disorders, and delusion.

The request for adjournment was denied.

Guo ran for mayor of Richmond in 2018.