Alberta lawyer Jeffrey Rath and his wife sold a waterfront estate in B.C. for $6.6 million – more than $4 million above its purchase price – while his firm fought a court order to refund millions to a First Nation client, Global News has found.
In March 2021, an Alberta judge ordered Rath’s firm to refund $8.5 million in legal fees to Tallcree First Nation. Rath and his firm appealed, and three months later, while the lawsuit continued, the couple sold their Galiano Island estate.
In the months that followed that sale, Rath signed documents transferring his interest in the couple’s Calgary home to his wife, Dayna Laverick-Rath, for a stated $1 and granting her a $10-million collateral mortgage over his Foothills ranch, property records show.
What happened to the proceeds of the Galiano sale, and the financial implications of the subsequent property transactions, remain unclear. Five years later, however, Tallcree is still fighting for that refund.
As Global News previously reported, Tallcree chief Rupert Meneen is suing Rath and his firm, RathPC, for nearly $15 million over disputed trust withdrawals, including the $8.5-million refund and millions in administration fees. The First Nation has now asked a court to expand an investigative receiver’s powers from investigating Rath’s finances to taking control of assets and recovering the money.
The lawsuit sparked further legal battles with other First Nations and American litigation funders, with more than $150 million in disputed debts, legal fees and allegedly unauthorized trust withdrawals at stake.
As lawyers scrutinize Rath’s finances and asset disclosures, Global examined records beyond his sworn testimony.
That investigation uncovered the Galiano estate sale and Calgary property transfer, which have not surfaced in court proceedings.
Rath has been questioned in court about the $10 million mortgage, however. He said it arose from a matrimonial property agreement and denied it was intended to protect assets from creditors.
Rath did not respond to questions for this story. However, he briefly spoke to Global on Oct. 17 during the lead-up to the Alberta referendum, characterizing the litigation as a “fee dispute” and saying First Nations had agreed to payments for legal services under agreed terms.
“Everybody understands what it is that they’ve agreed to pay,” he said. “At the end of the day, you know, they want to fight about it.”
Global also uncovered a 2019 letter, recently filed in court, in which Rath promised Tallcree beneficiaries his firm would charge no trustee fees — despite RathPC later billing the trust millions.
The investigation also examined court filings Rath submitted in September seeking the urgent release of $280,000 for horse-related expenses.
Rath warned that his horses’ health and safety were “in peril,” but several creditors told Global they had gone unpaid long before his assets were frozen.”
The horses are not worth what he owes me, I’ve been trying to get him to send me a transfer to take them to the sales,” Wilson said.
“For several months, he would just not pick up the phone,” Renee Wilson of Crawford Racing told Global.
Wilson said Rath owed her about US$50,000 for horse care dating back to February, although he only included a US$13,000 invoice from her in his September application.
But Wilson also criticized the government for freezing Rath’s assets, saying it unfairly burdened those caring for his horses.
“That’s wrong for the animals,” she said. “I don’t care who’s a bad person or not a bad person.”
Rath’s financial disclosures have been under the microscope in recent months, after an Alberta court froze his assets under a Mareva injunction and appointed an investigative receiver to trace the disputed funds.
Silver Gold Bull, a precious-metals trading platform, has emerged as a central player in the financial dealings. Documents show it received most of the $8.5-million million that was ordered to be refunded to Tallcree, while Rath continued trading through the platform. Meneen alleges those later transactions involved disputed trust funds.
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Among the transactions now being examined are approximately $200,000 worth of silver coins, prompting a contentious exchange in court over their whereabouts. Rath testified that he gave the coins to Laverick-Rath as a Christmas Eve gift in 2025.
“She filed for divorce, and we lived in separate residences, and I was hoping to reconcile, but we were still separated,” he said, during an October cross-examination.
However, purchase records show about $100,000 worth of those coins were bought after Christmas, on Dec. 27 and Jan. 7.
Questioning about the coins grew acrimonious. When Meneen’s lawyer asked how Rath had brought the boxes home, he replied: “I flew like a fairy. I drove in my car.”
He then called the questions “stupid” and “such a waste of time.”
Laverick-Rath died in June.
Rath maintained that the coins he gave his wife belonged to her estate. “It’s not mine to hand over to the receiver,” he testified.
Requests for her will and probate records remain unanswered, according to court filings.
Her estate has also come under scrutiny over Rath’s Alberta property holdings and mortgage arrangements.
During a September cross-examination, Rath said he had owned property in Vancouver but could not recall when he sold it, for how much or to whom, later estimating the sale was more than five or six years ago.
Global could not identify that property but found one Rath sold about five years ago on picturesque Galiano Island, off the B.C. coast.
Rath and Laverick-Rath jointly acquired two properties on the island for a combined $2.49 million in 2006 and 2008, according to land-title records.
Together, the properties formed Blue Raven Estate, a 9.4-acre waterfront compound featuring a nearly 5,000-square-foot main house, two guest houses, two deep-water docks, a helipad and a private four-hole golf course, archived real estate listings state.
The estate was listed for $8.58 million in December 2018. That was four months after another First Nation client, Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, sought a review of Rath’s legal fees, according to court documents. However, records show his lawyers were not formally served until later that December.
That same month, an American litigation funder registered a broad-based security interest over Rath’s professional corporation and advanced an initial $10 million under a funding agreement, separate documents show.
The estate was still advertised for the same price more than two years later.
The couple sold it in July 2021 for $6.6 million — $2 million below asking but $4.11 million above their combined purchase prices, land-title records show.
Within weeks of the sale, Rath transferred his interest in the couple’s $1.7-million Calgary home to Laverick-Rath for a stated $1. Three months later, she was granted a $10-million collateral mortgage against three properties at his Foothills ranch.
Rath did not respond to Global News questions about the property transactions.
Meneen is also challenging more than $4.8 million in administration fees charged by Rath, but a recent court-filed letter reveals a pledge at odds with those charges.
The original 2017 Tallcree trust agreement allowed RathPC to charge trustee fees.
But in March 2019, beneficiaries were preparing to vote on whether to retain Rath’s firm as trustee or transfer control of the settlement funds to the Bank of Montreal.
In a letter accompanying the ballots, Rath said his firms “do not charge a fee for acting as Trustee.
“Should Jeffrey R. W. Rath Professional Corporation continue to administer the Trust, it will continue to charge no fee in accordance with its practice to date.”
Beneficiaries voted 59-32 to keep Rath.
A month later, according to court documents, Rath allegedly told a Tallcree beneficiary his firm charged no administration fees and had “no intention of doing so,” claiming the Law Society monitored trust withdrawals.
The regulator told Global it does not.
Asked in September why he had no time records to justify $4.8 million in fees, Rath said he stopped tracking his hours in February 2018, because he planned to charge a percentage instead.
Confronted with the apparent contradiction related to the trustee fees, Rath insisted his statement had been “true at the time” and denied misleading beneficiaries. However, he said he could not recall correcting or updating the written promise.
On Sept. 11, Rath asked an Alberta court to unfreeze nearly $800,000 for personal and legal expenses, including almost $280,000 for overdue horse-related bills. He warned that his horses’ health and safety were “in peril,” submitting urgent invoices from trainers, veterinarians and others in Canada and the U.S.
But when Global contacted the creditors, several described bills that had gone unpaid for more than a year — long before Rath’s assets were frozen.
“I call him and he doesn’t answer the phone,” said Angel Diaz, a horse trainer in Menifee, California, who said Rath owed him more than $5,200, and the debt had accumulated over about a year.
Judy Hicks of Brookstown Farm, near Versailles, Kentucky, said: “He’s never been paid up for the two years he was here.”
“The reason was that, while his wife was alive, he told me it was because he didn’t want her to know he had horses. Because she did not approve of him having horses.”
Candice Foster, an Oklahoma horse hauler, said repeated attempts to collect a $1,000 bill for transporting one of Rath’s horses in December 2025 had gone unanswered.
But trainer John Ennis, who received a payment from RathPC in February, according to court-filed financial records, said his dealings with Rath had been “really good.”
“I’m sure Rath will get around to paying. He’s a good guy.”
Justice Lorena Harris rejected Rath’s application, finding his financial disclosures were “materially incomplete.”
Rath described his racehorses, which have earned nearly $500,000 in gross winnings since 2021 according to Equibase, as a “hobby,” but acknowledged using them for business purposes. Tallcree alleges trust funds helped finance the horses, a claim Rath disputes.
His troubles have since extended beyond the courtroom. In October, Alberta Prosperity Project board members voted to remove him from his roles, a decision Rath disputes, while the United Conservative Party expelled him on Oct. 29.
Rath remains defiant, accusing Premier Danielle Smith’s office of orchestrating a media campaign against him.
