Deloraine fraudster spared jail time

BRANDON — A Deloraine woman who stole more than $53,000 from two community groups has been sentenced to just under two years of house arrest.

Liza Park, 45, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud over $5,000 after she embezzled more than $35,000 from Deloraine Minor Ball Association and more than $18,000 from Prairie Gateway Tourism.

“She looked these people in the eye. She had meals with them. She sat beside them at games and cheered along with them, all the while she was stealing from them,” Crown attorney Ron Toews said in provincial court in Killarney last week.

Toews recommended Park spend 15 to 18 months behind bars.

In September 2023, the Town of Virden’s chief administrative officer reported fraud at Prairie Gateway Tourism. Park was employed full-time with the Town of Virden economic development office for four years, ending in April 2021, Toews said. She remained under contract with Prairie Gateway from April 2021 to September 2023.

During this time, Toews said Park was in charge of the finances and worked from home, where she kept the financial books. She was the only person authorized to access the organization’s online banking account.

Park e-transferred money to herself, from March 2022 to September 2023, Toews said. The fraud totalled more than $18,000.

In the other case, Deloraine Minor Ball president Paul Artz read a community impact statement outlining the effect of Park’s theft of more than $35,000. Park was the treasurer for the volunteer organization for about a decade, Artz said.

He said Deloraine Minor Ball became aware that money wasn’t going where it was supposed to after a business notified them about an outstanding bill.

“The immediate financial impact was the money taken from the kids and family over the period of many years, not to mention that the players … did without or used outdated, unsafe equipment because Deloraine Minor Ball was consistently broke,” Artz said.

He said about 100 children are part of the baseball group every year.

The bank could only track the thefts back to 2017.

“The cash that was taken without the ability to accurately track will be the biggest mystery,” Artz said.

Artz said the team constantly held fundraisers and “naively thought” that’s what it took to break even.

Defence lawyer Anthony Dawson said Park gave the money to him in full to pay restitution.

Dawson said Park was the family bread winner and had an alcohol addiction. He said Park has since managed her issues with alcohol on her own.

He asked the court to impose a sentence in the range of 18 months to two years less a day, but to be served from her home.

When Park was given the chance to speak, she apologized.

“I am truly sorry for the trust I broke and the harm I caused to the organizations that exist to serve others,” she said. “What I did was wrong, and I understand the seriousness of my actions.”

Judge John Combs told Park she had a lot of time to consider her actions and said her “long-lasting pattern of thefts” affected many people. “These types of matters involve not single actions, but numerous, and every time that you wrote a cheque or conducted a transaction that involved money going to you was an individual act of theft,” he said.

Combs said he was satisfied a conditional sentence would suffice.

— Brandon Sun