A veteran Toronto police officer was found guilty this week of stealing credit cards and a $6,500 watch from dead people he was tasked with investigating.
An Ontario judge found Const. Boris Borissov is guilty on Wednesday of all 15 charges against him in connection with five incidents that occurred between 2020 and 2022, including possession of a stolen Honda Pilot and misuse of a police database to assist an accomplice in the fraudulent acquisition of vehicles.
In her decision, Judge Mary Misener concluded that Borissov’s testimony was “completely unworthy of belief” and wrote that the police officer’s story “made no sense” at least a dozen times.
“I have found with respect to each count that the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence was that Mr. Borissov committed the offense charged,” he said in a written decision obtained by CTV News Toronto.
“His testimony was riddled with lies, inconsistencies and evasion. She rejected him. “It does not raise a reasonable doubt about his guilt.”
the incidents
On February 18, 2022, Borissov and another officer were called to the apartment of a man who was reported missing and later found to have committed suicide.
A court heard that while Borissov was investigating, he stole the man’s debit card, which was used by an associate named Zvezdomir Mollov at a Missisauga butcher shop the next day.
The Crown told the court that Borissov went to the butcher shop, downloaded Mollov’s surveillance footage and filed a false police report in an attempt to obstruct justice.
Borisov also took a TAG Heuer wristwatch, valued at $6,500, from the deceased’s apartment and tried to sell it lit, the Crown said. The watch was never found.
In his testimony, Borissov stated that the TAG Heuer watch box was empty when he arrived at the apartment. He also said that the only reason his phone records revealed that he had Googled the brand name after the search was because he was “curious about watches.”
As to how Borissov came to be in possession of the stolen credit cards, he told the court that he found the deceased’s wallet inside a jacket discovered on the promenade during the investigation and that he was concerned that the wind that day would ” drag,” prompting him to ask her to take the coat to his scout car.
Const. Boris Borissov takes the stand at his trial.
In a separate incident, Borissov was investigating the death of a woman on May 26, 2020, when he stole her credit card and gave the information to an unknown individual who then used it to make fraudulent purchases, court records show.
Borisov was arrested on April 11, 2022.
During the trial, the court heard that Borrisov was in possession of a stolen Honda Pilot at the time of his arrest, a vehicle he had obtained from Mr Mollov and which was equipped with a GPS jammer. Borrisov was also convicted of his involvement in Mollov’s “scheme” to obtain vehicles through fraud, in which the Toronto police officer misused police databases to “ensure the scheme was not detected.” ”.
Borrisov, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, is a 16-year veteran of the police service and has been suspended with pay since February 2022.