Vancouver lawyer Rajesh Soni ran his own firm, Soni & Company, from 2019 until early 2024. He’s now resigned from the Law Society of British Columbia after admitting to a years-long pattern of fabricating official documents, falsifying court stamps, and stringing along vulnerable clients in immigration, family, and civil cases. The details came out in a Rule 4-29 undertaking that the Law Society’s Discipline Committee accepted on April 2, 2026. As a result, Soni resigned effective April 9, 2026, and agreed to a 10-year ban on practicing law anywhere in Canada. He also has to let the Law Society know if he ever tries to practice overseas. So far, as of April 14, 2026, no criminal charges have been laid.
The Fraudulent Campaign: Admitted Facts
From roughly March 2021 through January 2024, Soni admitted to 19 counts of professional misconduct. The pattern was always the same: whenever an application stalled or he hadn’t paid the necessary fees, he chose to invent documents instead of telling his clients the truth.
In one immigration file involving Client AA, he never paid the filing fee for a permanent residency application, so it was rejected back in March 2021. Rather than admit what happened, he reassured the client that the delay was just the usual government backlog made worse by COVID-19. To back that story up, he created multiple fake IRCC letters that claimed the file was still being processed and even invented phone calls and emails with officials that never took place.
The divorce and name-change matter for Client BB, who followed the same script but went further. Soni handed the client completely fabricated “entered” Divorce Orders and Certificates of Divorce, even though he had never applied for them. He also produced fake court documents — a Notice of Application, a supporting affidavit, and a supposed order from Justice Butler — all complete with falsified court filing stamps dated November 2023. On top of that, he forged another lawyer’s signature and used that lawyer’s jurat stamp without permission. He even created letters on phony letterhead from the Head of the BC Public Service and a Court of Appeal justice, falsely promising approvals and dangling the idea of compensation if the client kept quiet about the delays.
He repeated similar fabrications in loan disputes and debt-collection files. Along the way, he mishandled more than $11,000 in trust funds and never sent proper bills to the clients. He even misled the Law Society by submitting invoices he had never actually given to his clients. None of this was a simple mistake. Soni deliberately used fake government letterhead, forged stamps and signatures, and built elaborate false stories that kept clients waiting for years.
Outcome: Professional Discipline, No Criminal Charges
The Law Society dealt with everything through a consensual Rule 4-29 process that followed a citation issued on February 13, 2025. The mitigating factors the committee noted were that Soni was a brand-new solo practitioner who had “little or no mentorship” and that he had faced various health and medical issues while the investigation was underway. He showed remorse right away and cooperated fully.
What stands out is the complete absence of any mention of police, an RCMP investigation, or criminal prosecution. The conduct he admitted to — forgery under Criminal Code section 366 and uttering forged documents under section 368 — carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and lines up exactly with what he did. Fraud under section 380 could apply as well if he obtained fees through deception. Clients who were harmed can still go to the Vancouver Police Department or the RCMP at any time, and criminal proceedings can happen alongside or after the Law Society process.
Immigration Timeline and Questions of “Two-Tier Justice”
Soni earned his law degree at Bond University in Australia before moving to British Columbia. He started articling with Barker & Company in Vancouver in August 2018 and was called to the BC bar on August 19, 2019. Just two months later, he opened his solo practice. That path marks him clearly as an immigrant lawyer who came to Canada as an internationally trained professional.
Online reactions to the CBC story that broke on April 13, 2026, have included comments framing the outcome as another example of “two-tier justice,” with some suggesting immigrants receive lighter professional penalties because of supposed “ignorance” of Canadian systems. The official record, however, doesn’t back that up as the deciding factor. The Law Society highlighted his newness to solo practice and lack of mentorship — problems that can hit any young lawyer, whether immigrant or Canadian-born — along with the health issues. The misconduct itself was deliberate and repeated over the years; it wasn’t the result of cultural misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about the rules. Consent resolutions like this one are used across the board whenever a lawyer accepts full responsibility, regardless of background.
For comparison, Canadian-born or long-established lawyers who have forged documents in the past have also ended up disbarred or forced to resign through discipline proceedings without immediate criminal charges, though every case turns on its own facts, such as the extent of the harm and any prior record. Criminal referrals from the Law Society are not automatic; they depend on client complaints and the public interest. Right now, there is nothing in the public file to show that Soni’s immigration status played any role in the penalty. The 10-year Canada-wide ban is a heavy sanction for a first-time discipline matter. It effectively ends his legal career here unless he is reinstated after 2036 — and that would require a full credentials hearing to prove he is of good character and fit to practice.
Broader Context and Lessons
The case shines a light on the risks that come with immigrant solo practices handling high-stakes immigration and family-law files. It also shows the clear line between professional regulation and the criminal justice system: once the citation was issued, the Law Society moved quickly to protect the public by securing the resignation and the ban. Whether criminal charges eventually follow will be up to the police and Crown prosecutors to decide.
In the end, Soni’s admitted forgery campaign was serious, calculated, and damaging. He arrived in Canada, built a practice quickly, and saw it collapse through his own actions. The regulatory system delivered a swift and severe professional consequence. Suggestions of systemic bias in how penalties are handed out remain unproven in this file and can easily oversimplify what was really a story of individual misconduct, limited support for a new practitioner, and the separate roles played by the Law Society and the criminal courts. For now, the public record is all we have; any criminal developments would show up first in court dockets or new Law Society updates.