‘Strong message of deterrence’: health care aide who stole $80K from dying patient sentenced to jail time

A former health care aide who admitted stealing more than $80,000 from a nursing home patient dying of cancer sobbed uncontrollably as a judge denied her bid for house arrest and sentenced her to six months in jail.

Only a jail sentence could adequately deter otherwise law-abiding citizens from preying on similarly vulnerable victims, provincial court Judge Wanda Garreck told Marilyn Dayrit at a sentencing hearing last week.

Dayrit, 50, previously pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000.

Crown and defence lawyers both recommended Garreck sentence Dayrit to nine months custody, with the defence urging Garreck to grant Dayrit a conditional sentence that would allow her to serve her custody at home.

Garreck declined to grant the conditional sentence but agreed to reduce Dayrit’s period of custody to six months in recognition of her guilty plea and the fact that she and her husband sold their family home to satisfy restitution to the now deceased victim’s estate.

“I am satisfied it is still a strong message of deterrence to otherwise law-abiding citizens (that) if they choose to abuse a position of trust in this way, they will be removed from the community (and) they will serve a period of jail,” Garreck said.

Dayrit was a longtime health care aide at Holy Family Home on Aberdeen Avenue when, in November 2023, she stole a chequebook belonging to the 88-year-old victim. Over the next five months, she forged 30 cheques totalling $81,500 and deposited the money into her own account.

The fraud was discovered after the victim’s niece, who had power of attorney and was concerned about her finances, was provided access to her banking records.

The niece and a bank employee reviewed the records and discovered the forged cheques, the largest of them in the amount of $10,000.

Bank security video captured Dayrit depositing the cheques into her own account.

Court heard Dayrit’s employment was terminated for an unrelated reason on Feb. 1, 2024, after which she continued to cash more forged cheques for another two months before her eventual arrest last October.

At the time of the fraud, Dayrit was the sole breadwinner for her family, and was supporting her recently unemployed husband, three teenage children, one of whom is disabled, and her mother-in-law, who has early-onset dementia, defence lawyer Daniel Cleto told court at a sentencing hearing last month.

Dayrit also spent some of the victim’s money on gambling, using her trips to city casinos as an “outlet for her stress and anxiety,” Cleto said.

“She acknowledges to a gambling addiction,” he said.

Garreck said she was not satisfied Dayrit had a gambling addiction, noting she has never undergone an addiction assessment, but accepted she gambled in the hopes of recouping money to repay the victim.

Dayrit “exercised extremely poor judgment,” Garreck said. “Not only did her choices cause significant harm by breaching the trust of the victim, it has rippled out to cause harm to her family” and likely would have cast suspicion on other staff at the care home, she said.

Garreck ordered that Dayrit’s jail sentence be followed by 18 months supervised probation.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca