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An Ontario realtor is warning against mistaken identity after social media comments and calls to his brokerage wrongly linked him to a Calgary man charged in an alleged child abduction tied to a “catch a predator” scheme involving youth in Airdrie.
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An Ontario realtor is warning against mistaken identity after social media comments and calls to his brokerage wrongly linked him to a Calgary man charged in an alleged child abduction tied to a “catch a predator” scheme involving youth in Airdrie. Photo submitted / Zain Merchant
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An Ontario realtor is warning against mistaken identity after social media comments and calls to his brokerage wrongly linked him to a Calgary man charged in an alleged child abduction tied to a “catch a predator” scheme involving youth in Airdrie.

RCMP said a group of youth arranged a meeting with a man through Snapchat in Airdrie’s Coopers Crossing neighbourhood on Aug. 18. A 12-year-old boy got into a vehicle voluntarily so friends could record the encounter, but the driver allegedly drove away. The boy later escaped at a red light and called 911.

In an initial release, the RCMP identified the suspect as “Zain Merchant.” Court records obtained Aug. 21 confirmed his full legal name is Zain Alnoor Merchant, 37, of Calgary. He is not the Ontario realtor interviewed in this article. The two men share the same first and last name, but are not the same person.

“My full name is Zain Merchant. I don’t have a middle name,” the Ontario realtor said in an Aug. 22 interview with Discover Airdrie. “I am much younger than the person in the article previously, and I’m situating myself in Toronto.”

“I’ve been working here as a realtor since 2021,” he said. “I am also licensed Realtor [sic] in Alberta as well.”

“Because I’m situated in Calgary as well, under Urban Realty, which is a local brokerage which provides homes for families, I’m searchable in that sphere as well. So people did kind of jump to it.”

Merchant said he was blindsided when messages began flooding in after the case made headlines.

“I was just finishing up dinner with my family, and then I kept getting these Instagram requests, and it’s typical, I’m in real estate… But then they were like, Oh, is this you? And then I look at the screenshot, and it’s like a news article, and I’m like, what? And then I tried searching it up, and then it’s kind of everywhere,” he said.

“Because the story is heartbreaking, and the ones that got released, people just had tons of frustration, and they just needed some place to throw it,” Merchant said.

He said the reaction caused real damage to him and his workplace.

“Some people started… saying mean things online. Urban Realty, my local brokerage, started getting calls as well, saying, Oh, what are you employing Zain Merchant? And obviously, to be a licensed individual as a realtor, there are… criminal background checks, right? So that can never happen for someone who has any sort of criminal background to easily obtain a license, for that matter.”

Urban Realty is an independent Calgary-based brokerage with more than 200 realtors, according to the company’s website.

“So people who kind of dug in and actually research properly, they were, funnily enough, defending me online — people who were trying to attack my profile online,” he said.

He stressed that the industry is tightly regulated.

“You have to follow guidelines, criminal background checks, right? So the RECA [Real Estate Council of Alberta] is the governing body, right? So that can never happen for someone who has any sort of criminal background,” he said.

“For the people who… wrote mean things, it happens. I understand the story. Some of them already apologized, and deleted them once they realized their mistake,” Merchant said.

“Obviously, I’m in a public-facing setting, so I know how to interact with the public in a way that’s still neutral, and obviously it’s not me, but I think I managed it as best as I could,” he said.

“I pray the families get justice, obviously, first and foremost,” Merchant said. “But people should be a bit more careful before they just start jumping to conclusions, because it can destroy people’s livelihoods a little bit. Let’s wait for the news channels to properly release all the information. So now that there’s a middle name intact, we can kind of clarify that, you know, this person is someone different.”

“My local brokerage, Urban Realty, faced some negative backlash with ongoing calls. So you know, like I would encourage the audience to do your research before you’re just going and calling people and… organizations in that manner, because it does disrupt business in a certain way,” he said.

“I trust that they do the best they can with whatever information they have in the moment,” he said of police and media.

“For me, it is back to work. My daily job is to help families buy a home, sell a home, and find a place to, you know, create a new story, whether it’s renting as well. So I will continue to do my work as per usual, and I hope the families that are impacted… fine [sic],” he said.

“I wish that you knew there are more ways that people make communities stronger. And whether this was one instance where community comes together, I hope that communities tend to become stronger with positive news as well.”

The Calgary man charged in the case is Zain Alnoor Merchant, 37, of Calgary. He is facing nine offences, including abduction of a person under 14, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, kidnapping, forcible confinement, flight from a peace officer and three counts of breaching a prohibition order. A Criminal Code s. 486.4 publication ban prohibits identifying the complainant. He remains in custody and is scheduled to return to the Alberta Court of Justice in Airdrie on Aug. 28.

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