Uncle sues Canada's Daily Hive co-founder, claiming bad investment advice and unpaid loans

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (CN) — A co-founder of a prominent Canadian media publication owes his uncle nearly half a million Canadian dollars for years of unpaid loans and gave his uncle bad investment advice, the man says in a new lawsuit.

Manny Bahia is one of two co-founders of Daily Hive, a popular media outlet that covers food, culture, and local news in several cities across Canada, as well as in Seattle and Portland. The publication, which was founded in 2008 as Vancity Buzz, began as a local blog, but grew rapidly in the mid-2010s.

ZoomerMedia Ltd. bought the company in 2022 for CA$16.4 million, including $6 million in cash, $3 million in Zoomer shares and $5 million in a promissory note, with the remainder paying down the company’s debts.

Shortly after the expansion, between 2017 and 2018, Bahia’s uncle, Gurdeep Singh Atwal, claims in legal filings that Bahia began asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans.

Atwal says he and his company, A for Apple Consulting Inc., loaned Bahia CA$500,000, which Bahia only partially repaid in 2022 and 2023. In all, he claims Bahia has paid just under CA$90,000 for a total owed, including a 2% interest rate, of over CA$481,000.

Atwal also claims Bahia began gave him poor investment advice, which he relied on, given Bahia’s business and economics degrees and his national success with Daily Hive.

“By his words and conduct, Manny represented to Gurdeep and his companies that the advice he provided to them about business and investment matters was given in good faith and that Gurdeep should reasonably rely upon it,” Atwal says in the lawsuit.

“Manny knew that he held special expertise and was more sophisticated and successful in business than Gurdeep had been. He held himself out as someone that Gurdeep and his companies could trust and rely on and that he would look out for their interests," he continues.

Atwal claims Bahia encouraged him to invest in several businesses, claiming they were sound investments from which Atwal would see strong profits. But he says Bahia didn’t tell him about his conflicts of interests in promoting investment in the companies.

Those include Greenshield Holdings Inc., a proposed cannabis business in which A for Apple invested CA$15,000.

The company amalgamated into GrowX Global Corp., according to BC Online, and it ultimately failed, causing Atwal’s company to lose its entire investment.

“Apparently, the BC Securities Commission investigated the principals of those companies and a prosecution for distributing securities without having an approved prospectus was brought,” Atwal says in the lawsuit.

Earlier this year, Jasvinder Basi was given a suspended sentence for securities violations related promoting investment in GlowX Global Corp. without disclosing that it was in financial distress.

Atwal claims the people behind GrowX were friends of Bahia’s and that Bahia never told him of that friendship.

On top of losing $15,000 to Greenshield, Atwal claims he lost another $15,000 to G Pak and Nexe Innovations Inc., and $25,000 to a numbered company doing business as AmWolf Capital and Pontus Protein Ltd., all on Bahia’s advice.

The one company that appears to have been successful was Nude Beverages, a company selling canned hard seltzers.

In that case, Atwal says he gave Bahia $10,000 to invest in the company, but Bahia registered the securities in his own name and has never reported back to Atwal about any profits or the valuation of the investment.

Atwal claims Bahia owed him a fiduciary duty, which he breached by encouraging him to invest in risky, speculative business ventures, despite knowing Atwal had limited income from a government pension.

“Both Gurdeep and his wife were advanced in age, had health issues, and were well past the age of active employment or any ability to recover from significant investment losses,” Atwal says in the suit.

“The investments he advised and recommended to the plaintiffs were high-risk, speculative and inappropriate investments for the plaintiffs to make," he continues.

Bahia, however, denied the claims when reached by email.

“Many of the allegations made in this court filing are without merit, and it is unfortunate that the plaintiffs have decided to advance them despite that they know they are untrue,” he wrote. “I intend to vigorously defend myself, and I am in the process of retaining counsel to do so.”

Atwal is seeking an order for the reported $481,000 in loans to be repaid and an accounting of the money he says he invested through Bahia.

Courthouse News reached out to Atwal’s lawyer but didn’t receive a response.

Atwal’s claims have not been tested in court.

Courthouse News reporter Dustin Godfrey is based in Vancouver, Canada.