Admitted scammer appealing sentence

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This article was published 10/07/2009 (6111 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Perry Fontaine is only a few weeks into a prison sentence he admitted he deserved. Now, the former head of a Manitoba addictions treatment centre is seeking a legal "do-over," claiming he actually should have been given a conditional sentence that keeps him free in the community.

"It’s just incredible," a veteran justice official said Thursday after learning Fontaine had filed an appeal of what appeared to be a closed case. "I don’t know what he’s trying to do here."

Fontaine was given a three-year sentence in June for his role in a scam that robbed taxpayers of several million dollars. He had requested a two-year sentence in a federal penitentiary.

Fontaine has since fired his lawyer and hired new counsel. He is expected to seek bail later this month, provided the Manitoba Court of Appeal grants him permission to argue his case.

Fontaine likely faces a steep uphill climb, considering he previously agreed a conditional sentence was not appropriate for his crime. No reasons for the surprising flip-flop have been filed in court.

Fontaine admits he orchestrated an elaborate fraud that allowed him to enjoy a lavish lifestyle filled with exotic trips, fancy cars and expensive jewelry. His sentence included an order to pay restitution of $2.36 million, which is the amount he personally received through the scam.

Fontaine admits he set up two phoney consulting firms that skimmed millions of dollars in program payments from Health Canada to the Virginia Fontaine Addictions Foundation. He pleaded guilty last September to charges of fraud and bribing a public official.

Fontaine engineered the fraud with two senior federal government employees: Paul Cochrane, an assistant deputy minister of health; and Patrick Nottingham, the ex-regional director of Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit health programs in Manitoba. Cochrane and Nottingham pleaded guilty in the fall of 2005. In exchange for testifying against Fontaine, Cochrane was given a one-year sentence and ordered to make $211,000 in restitution. Nottingham, who also agreed to testify against Fontaine, was given a conditional sentence of two years less a day and ordered to pay $1.14 million in restitution.

Crown attorney Dale Harvey said Fontaine had convinced Cochrane and Nottingham to increase funding to the treatment centre over the course of several years. In exchange, Fontaine diverted centre funds to two consulting firms — one controlled by Nottingham and his wife, and another controlled by Fontaine. The centre paid the consulting firms on the pretext of providing services to the centre, but in reality the firms provided work of no value, Harvey said, and the money was paid to Nottingham and Fontaine, who also directed money back to Cochrane.

Harvey said that between 1991 and 2000, the centre received $97.5 million in funding from Ottawa and part of those funds was diverted to pay for luxury vehicles, homes, NHL hockey tickets and vacations for the three men and their families. Harvey said the scheme began to unravel with a 2000 newspaper report of a Caribbean cruise taken by Fontaine and 70 centre staff, along with Cochrane. That resulted in Health Canada ordering a forensic audit, which took three years to complete. Harvey said centre staff had described Fontaine as a manipulative bully, who threatened other board members to get his way.

The treatment centre was the largest employer at Sagkeeng First Nation with 100 workers when it closed amid the scandal.

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