A Kamloops woman who bilked her employer for more than $144,000 in a “complex” scheme that lasted almost six years has been ordered to spend 20 months in prison.
Christina Bornais, 48, was sentenced Monday in B.C. Supreme Court after earlier pleading guilty to two counts of destroying or altering a record to defraud and one count each of theft and fraud.
Bornais was hired in 2011 to work as an office manager for Dr. Maureen Murray, a dentist who operates a clinic on Hillside Drive.
Court heard Bornais began to divert money from the clinic into her personal bank account in 2013. Using patient insurance information, she fraudulently billed insurers for treatments that had not been undertaken. She also overcharged for real work.
The fudged numbers were only discovered after the clinic hired an accounting consultant. Murray became aware of the situation early in 2019 and fired Bornais.
The extent of the scheme is not known due to efforts Bornais took to cover her tracks.
"The exact monetary extent of the fraud is not possible to ascertain with certainty,” B.C. Supreme Court Justice Brad Smith said Monday in his decision.
“The steps that Ms. Bornais took to obscure her activities in the clinic account system made it impossible to completely reconstruct exactly how many transactions were legitimately sourced and how many were generated fraudulently."
According to an agreed statement of facts, an audit determined at least $144,885.96 was stolen by Bornais.
Bornais was described in court as an alcoholic who began stealing to pay legal bills for her son, who was facing serious criminal charges at the time. In a letter to the court, Bornais said she was trying to repay the stolen money when the situation “snowballed" out of control.
Crown prosecutor Leah Winters had been seeking a sentence of 20 months in prison, while defence lawyer Joe Killoran sought a lengthy house arrest term to be followed by probation.
Smith determined house arrest was not an appropriate sentence given the circumstances of Bornais’ offences. He went along with the Crown and ordered Bornais spend 20 months in prison and a further two years on probation, during which time she will be barred from having any contact with Murray or Deborah Scott, the accounting consultant who uncovered the fraud.
“This was a large theft,” Smith said.
“Ms. Bornais’ scheme was complex in nature because it involves multiple victims, multiple transactions involving 241 cheques, fraudulently billing, depositing cheques in multiple personal bank accounts, altering records, falsifying records, misfiling records, misusing private patient information and attempting to obscure and avoid detection."
In addition, Smith issued another order prohibiting Bornais from working or volunteering with money or valuables for the next 10 years.
Bornais, who has no previous criminal record, was also ordered to repay $141,604.87 to Murray by Dec. 31, 2030. That is the amount Scott was able to trace back to Bornais’ fraudulent actions.
