A B.C. man who says he lost more than $867,000 through a sophisticated online investment scheme has sued multiple companies and a major bank in an attempt to get his money back.

Filed July 2 in B.C. Supreme Court, the lawsuit from Sonny Robert Joyce alleges several B.C. and Ontario companies conspired to carry out the scheme—which reeled people in with social media advertising and a WhatsApp chat group.

None of the claims have been tested in court.

“On or about December 30, 2025, the plaintiff clicked on a Facebook advertisement inviting users to join an ‘investment community,’” reads the lawsuit.

Joyce was then directed to the WhatsApp messaging platform, where someone who identified themselves as Emily Carter told him that he had been approved to join the “D2-Maple Elite Investment Group.”

Claiming to be affiliated with the Verition Fund Management Group hedge fund, the defendants allegedly told Joyce that he would be investing in legitimate trading and initial public offerings to buy companies’ shares for the first time.

The investment group allegedly contained about 100 purported members, many of whom were not real people, but automated accounts or bots.

The petition names several companies and individuals connected to the fraud. They include two B.C. entities registered in December 2025 and January 2026—Axis Supply Distribution Ltd. and its director, Yuk Lun Fung; and 1574399 B.C. Ltd. and its director, Shuoheng Huang. Two numbered companies from Ontario are also named as defendants, alongside their directors, Rengui Zheng and Qingxiang Feng.

Together, the group of companies and individuals first gained Joyce’s trust by recommending the purchase of publicly traded stocks, the suit claims. Someone calling himself Professor Brian Murphy joined the investor chat group on Jan. 9, 2026. Murphy, who claimed to be an experienced investment professional, was in fact an online persona created to further the scheme, the suit claims.

Together, Carter and Murphy told Joyce and the rest of the investment group that they had created a sophisticated trading system that relied on computational analysis and propriety algorithms to automatically select profitable trades.

The system was tested and the risk was minimal, allowing them to achieve returns of up to 600 per cent, the investment group was allegedly told.

Carter told Joyce he had been approved to access the trading system on Jan. 23, 2026, the suit claims. That’s the same day the defendant corporation 1574399 B.C. Ltd. was registered, according to corporate records.

Joyce claims he was told to download the mobile app Veripro-X, later renamed Veripro-Max.

“In fact, there was no quantitative trading system,” the suit alleges.

Trading on the fraudulent mobile apps was made more convincing when the defendants allegedly presented Joyce with false records of trading profits.

Joyce claims he was instructed to contact customer service and approve wire transfers whenever he wanted to make a trade.

The first e-transfer he made was for $9,000. Smaller $1,500 transfers followed. Soon daily gains were displayed on the Veripro app. Joyce’s account balances went up, according to the lawsuit.

On Feb. 3, he wired $230,000 to a Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO) account held by the Ontario numbered company. Within a week, he made two other transfers for $290,000 and $330,000—raising the total to $867,570, according to the lawsuit.

On the app, Joyce alleges his profits appeared to have surged to US$2.6 million.

The lawsuit states a senior manager at a BMO branch in Scarborough, Ont., where Joyce had sent the wire transfers, called on Feb. 10 with a message: he was likely a victim of fraud.

Joyce called the Burnaby RCMP, filed a report and attempted to recover his money, the petition claims.

While BMO froze an unknown amount of the transferred money, much of Joyce’s funds remain unrecovered.

The lawsuit claims the defendants worked in concert to build his trust, concealing their true identities through a range of tactics, including the use of aliases, messaging applications, shell corporations and intermediary banking arrangements.

That allowed the defendants—several of whom remain unknown—to launder the proceeds of fraud, the suit alleges.

Joyce’s court challenge also targets BMO for failing to take reasonable steps to investigate or prevent the fraudulent scheme—one that saw about $850,000 flow through the bank’s accounts.

“BMO failed to warn the plaintiff or take steps to prevent further losses,” states the lawsuit.

“BMO knew or ought to have known that the accounts receiving the funds were associated with fraudulent activity, or was reckless or wilfully blind to that fact.”

Joyce is seeking damages for the loss of his money and disgorgement of any profits earned through the defendants’ alleged enrichment.

Among other things, he is also seeking damages against BMO for negligence and a court order tracking the funds through multiple accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, and any other place the money can be traced.

A BMO spokesperson declined to comment because the matter is before the courts.

Business in Vancouver could not reach any of the other named plaintiffs. One of the companies, Axis Supply, has a registered address at a business park in Richmond. A reporter visited the location but found no trace of a business operating under the name Axis Supply.

Axis Supply director Yuk Lun Fung has a residential address listed in Vancouver. An individual who answered the door waved a reporter away, claiming not to understand him.

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