Stealing money meant for children’s charities garners prison term

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Stealing greater than $450,000 in funds earmarked for kids’s charities has earned the muse’s former treasurer a 3 1/2-year jail sentence.

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And if Nicole Mann fails to repay the $456,685.13 she defrauded her employer inside 5 years of her launch from jail, she must serve three extra years behind bars, Decide Bruce Fraser ordered Friday.

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Fraser agreed with Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston {that a} high-quality as an alternative of a confiscation order could be acceptable in Mann’s case.

Protection lawyer David Roper argued an order that Mann pay restitution to the true property brokerage agency Colliers CMN Calgary, which established the charitable fund, could be an acceptable treatment.

However Fraser mentioned a bit of the Legal Code permitting fines in lieu of confiscation orders, and detention for failure to pay the fines, was a extra acceptable methodology of coping with the stolen money.

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“The protection coming into a restitution order is acceptable, however should be a free-standing order,” the provincial courtroom choose mentioned in his sentencing determination.

“The issue with a (free-standing) order is that there isn’t any incentive to make restitution, since there are not any penalties if it’s not paid apart from the sufferer to file a civil order of judgment,” he mentioned.

“(The high-quality in lieu of forfeiture part) is designed to have the implications of incarceration as the inducement to pay the high-quality.”

Whereas Fraser might set that interval as excessive as 5 years, he ordered that Mann serve the minimal three years if she fails to pay up.

The choose additionally rejected Roper’s name for a sentence of lower than two years on the fraud and cash laundering fees, which might have allowed him to have Mann serve her time period locally below a suspended sentence order.

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Fraser agreed with Johnston that though new adjustments by Parliament within the CSO laws made such a sentence an possibility, it was not acceptable in Mann’s case.

“It’s clear on this case, fraud by an individual ready of belief to her employer, a conditional sentence order won’t have the required deterrence or conviction,” he mentioned.

In Mann’s responsible plea final September, Fraser rejected her declare that she wrote checks totaling greater than $450,000 to an organization shareholder as “hush cash” about incidents the place she says she was sexually assaulted by others.

He mentioned a jail sentence was warranted as there have been no mitigating components and the irritating components included Mann writing 90 cast checks to herself over a three-year interval.

KMartin@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @KMartinCourts