Former CAO gets house arrest for curling club theft

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This article was published 12/09/2024 (365 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former chief administrative officer of the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford will spend the next year and a half under house arrest for stealing thousands of dollars from the Carberry Curling Club, a Brandon judge decided recently.

Trisha Dawn Fraser, 36, previously pleaded guilty to theft over $5,000 after she was charged following an RCMP investigation that began last year.

The investigation found that while volunteering as treasurer of the Carberry Curling Club, Fraser stole $30,000 over the course of a year.

After she left the treasurer position, and while working as CAO for the RM of North Cypress-Langford, Fraser used unauthorized funds from the municipality to reimburse the curling club.

The year-and-a-half house-arrest sentence was agreed upon by both the Crown and Fraser’s lawyer at the sentencing hearing, which took place on Aug. 30.

Crown attorney Ron Toews told the court that prosecutors were not seeking restitution as part of the sentence because the club has been paid back in full.

“What we have is a case where the accused looked her victims in the eye at every curling event, every community event and she would do so knowing that she had stolen their money — money that they entrusted with her at one point, money of her employer, money that was paid by taxpayers of the community that she continues to reside in,” Towes said.

Toews highlighted parts of the pre-sentence report, for which Fraser was interviewed.

Fraser said she stole the money after her divorce left her with legal fees and struggling financially to support her two young children.

In the report, Fraser said the club was willing to let her pay it back, but the RM decided to contact the police and pursue charges. She described her actions as “being upfront” and “trusting the wrong people.”

Toews called some of her responses in the report as displaying a “selfish attitude,” and said that her comments to the report author suggested that she was deflecting blame onto the community that held her accountable for her actions.

“I would suggest that that’s quite a concerning comment in the sense that it’s upside-down logic, that the right people trusted her, and she violated that trust,” he said.

He also noted how she told the report author that she has received “mean” attitudes and comments from community members who found out about her being charged.

“I’m not sure why she would seem to be surprised as she seems to be about her receiving some negative comments from community members,” Towes said. “It’s because she violated the trust of people that she shared a community with and directly affected their lives.”

Fraser’s lawyer, Neil Steen, told the court that his client was married to a man who was verbally abusive and irresponsible with money and left Fraser and her children in 2022.

The defence lawyer said Fraser was responsible for paying for her car, her kids’ activities and her mortgage. He said she takes full responsibility for her actions and is remorseful.

“To be clear, those decisions were so that she could pay for things like her children’s activities and feed her children,” Steen said, adding that Fraser made a mistake by not seeking help or telling her family about her situation instead of stealing the money.

She was able to pay back the money through the help of her family, the defence lawyer said. He also added that when Fraser was confronted by police about the cheque to the curling club from the municipality, she said that the reeve of the RM wasn’t involved.

“I think it’s pretty clear that this is someone who didn’t want to get other people into trouble,” Steen said.

Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta said Fraser should be given credit for taking responsibility and pleading guilty. But she also noted the amount of money stolen was significant and agreed with the Crown that Fraser seemed to be rationalizing her behaviour in the pre-sentence report.

While endorsing the recommended house-arrest sentence, the judge also reminded Fraser of how her actions will affect her children.

“In no way should you be telling yourself or allowing yourself to think that in any way this benefited your children or was for the benefit of your children,” Hewitt-Michta said. “You set an absolutely horrendous example for them and now they will suffer the impact (and) the consequences along with you.”

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