Former Burnaby realtor Kuljinder Singh (Kelly) Bhatti shakes hands with his lawyer, Mark Berry, after leaving B.C. Provincial Court in Vancouver Monday. Bhatti was handed a one-year suspended sentence after being caught in a Surrey Creep Catchers sting on April 3, 2017. Photo Cornelia Naylor
Warning: this story contains disturbing content.
A former Burnaby realtor accused of trying to arrange sex with what turned out to be a fictitious six-year-old girl and her mother has been handed a one-year conditional sentence after pleading guilty to a lesser charge.
Kuljinder Singh (Kelly) Bhatti, 37, made headlines in April 2017, after a dramatic confrontation between him and members of the Surrey Creep Catchers vigilante pedophile hunter group was captured on video and posted on Facebook page.
Bhatti had been at a Tim Hortons in the Surrey Central City Mall on April 3 to meet Kimberly Richter, a woman working with the Creep Catchers and posing to Bhatti as a mother selling sex with herself and her fictitious six-year-old daughter “Abby.”
No such girl existed, but Bhatti had communicated with Richter via email and text, arranging to have sex with both as part of a “package deal,” according to agreed facts presented in B.C. Provincial Court in Vancouver Monday.
“Seriously, time is standing still when I think of how long I have to wait,” Bhatti said in an email read out in court.
During two audio-taped meetings between Bhatti and Richter, the pair discussed such things as lubricants and condoms, with Bhatti indicating he was prepared to have sex with the girl as well as the mother.
“The first time is going to be the worst time,” he said, explaining he didn’t know how Abby would respond.
After the Creep Catchers confrontation, which saw president Ryan LaForge charged with assault for shoving Bhatti around, Bhatti was charged with communicating to buy under-aged sex.
In a plea deal, however, he ended up pleading guilty Monday only to communicating to buy sex.
Judge Nancy Phillips accepted a joint sentencing submission from special prosecutor Greg Delbigio and defence lawyer Mark Berry, and handed Bhatti a one-year conditional sentence and $500 fine.
He has also been ordered to give a DNA sample and will be registered as a sex offender.
Bhatti will have a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the first six months of his sentence, and a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the second six months.
He is also banned from contacting anyone under the age of 18 except under circumstances approved by his sentence supervisor.
Bhatti’s discussions with Richter began in March 2017 when he responded to a fake Creep Catchers ad featuring a scantily clad woman and the words “Fantasy babysitter” and “Make all your open-minded dreams come true.”
In his submissions, Berry noted the ad didn’t explicitly refer to sex with an under-aged person and that it was Richter and not Bhatti who had introduced the idea of sex with Abby in the ensuing texts and emails.
At one point Bhatti said that was “not his regular gig.”
Berry argued Bhatti’s goal had really been sex with Richter, not with Abby.
“Mr. Bhatti is somebody who, to be perfectly candid, saw the opportunity to have sexual contact with a woman that was, by his estimation, far out of his league, a woman that he would never have a chance at having any contact with in a million years, and he was prepared to say absolutely anything to string that along to achieve his goal, which was to actually have sexual contact with that woman.”
Phillips agreed it was a mitigating factor that Bhatti had not initiated the discussions about Abby but reiterated the realtor’s discussions with Richter had encompassed having sex with a six-year-old.
“They were ongoing and far beyond mere curiosity,” she said in her decision. “Mr. Bhatti was an active and willing participant in those discussions.”
But Philips went on to note a number of other factors in Bhatti’s favour: he had no previous criminal record, a psychological assessment had found him to be a low-risk to reoffend, he had initiated plea discussions early in the court process, and he had had no difficulty complying with his bail conditions.
Bhatti, who was married at the time of the incident, is now separated and unemployed, according to Berry.
After the Creep Catchers incident, Berry said threats were directed at Bhatti’s residential building and realty office, Sutton Centre Realty on Boundary Road.
Bhatti has also been disowned by members of his family, Berry said.
“Every aspect of this individual’s life has been significantly altered for the worse,” Berry said. “He made his own bed. He put himself there. He acknowledges that, but it is still an incredibly difficult process for him.”
One of Bhatti’s older sisters described her brother as a “stunted social developer” who had been coddled by their mother as the baby of the family, according to Berry.
That role had changed abruptly, however, when his father died when he was 18 and he was expected to take on the role of man of the family, Berry said.
Delbigio, a senior Vancouver lawyer in private practice, was appointed on April 5, 2017 to take on Bhatti’s case as a special prosecutor since one of Bhatti’s sisters is an employee of the Criminal Justice Branch.
