Charges against the local cash-for-gold employee alleged to have hired a hitman to kill a competitor were recently dropped. Now, Maria Konstan is suing those she says wrongly accused her of plotting to commit murder.
Konstan is asking for about $3.5 million in damages from jewellery store owner Jack Berkovits, Saeed Hossieni, Toronto Police Service, police chief Bill Blair and the original officer involved in the case.
“It has been a horrible year,” said Konstan. “I’m humiliated. I lost my pride and dignity.”
According to Konstan’s statement of claim, Hossieni and Berkovits alleged that she had asked Hossieni to murder Berkovits, who owns Omni Jewelcrafters. Omni was located across the street from Harold the Jewellery Buyer, a store at which both Konstan and Hossieni once worked.
Konstan was arrested in July of 2010 and was charged with threatening to destroy property, threatening bodily harm, threatening death and two counts of counselling to commit an indictable offence.
The charges against Konstan were dropped in June of this year.
Senior Crown prosecutors re-evaluated the case in June, said spokesperson Brendan Crawley, via e-mail. He said the Crown concluded they were not in a position to prove the charges.
Crawley declined to comment further.
“If they couldn’t prove them [the charges] now, then they couldn’t prove them then, and if they couldn’t prove them then, why did they charge her in the first place?” asked Konstan’s lawyer, Barry Swadron.
“Obviously we were thrilled,” said Harold Gerstel, owner of Harold the Jewellery Buyer. “We had no doubt they [the charges] would be dropped. We knew this was a waste of the public dollar.”
Berkovits would not comment on the matter other than to repeat the Crown’s statement. Hossieni could not be reached.