Airport worker jailed for 60 days

Woman admits to skimming money, pleads guilty to theft

If you ever paid for parking or bought a coffee at the Windsor Airport from 2013 to 2015, chances are that money was quickly stolen by finance manager Jamie Grabijas.

An airport audit showed more than $400,000 disappeared between April 2, 2013, and Dec. 31, 2015. Windsor police fraud investigators think Grabijas skimmed nearly $220,000. She admitted to taking $40,000.

Grabijas, 56, pleaded guilty Thursday to theft. Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean sentenced her to 60 days in jail. With early release, Grabijas will be home in time for Halloween.

Grabijas was in charge of counting and depositing cash collected from parking and the cafe at the airport. The safe was in her office and she would routinely skim money from it.

But others had access to the money, too, said defence lawyer Elizabeth Craig. “She did not have exclusive opportunity.”

Court heard that Jim McCormack, the airport’s finance director, began asking questions about cash deposits in February 2016. “I can tell you right now it won’t reconcile,” Grabijas told him. “The money you are looking for — I probably did something.”

Grabijas offered to pack up her things on the spot, turned in her keys and never came back.

Grabijas was under financial pressure at home, court heard.

Her diabetic husband got an infection and had to have his right leg amputated at the knee in 2009. Because he had not worked steadily in the preceding seven years, the former pattern maker was denied a government disability pension, Craig said.

At the time of her theft, Grabijas’s son, now 22, was moving to Vancouver Island where their daughter lives. Grabijas helped her son with car payments and cellphone bills, in addition to paying a mortgage and mounting credit card bills racked up because of her husband’s illness.

“It’s not like she used the money for gambling or extravagant vacations or expensive cars,” Craig said. “She used it for household expenses.”

Grabijas had taken an executive secretarial program at St. Clair College and landed jobs with local companies after graduation. In 1999, she got a job at the airport as an administrative assistant with Jazz, a regional airline owned by Air Canada.

From that job she segued to YQG Windsor, also known as the Windsor Airport. She was handed more and more responsibility, but no more pay, Craig said.

She helped herself to cash thinking she could pay it back later, Craig told the court. “It spiralled out of control.”

But Grabijas made no excuses for her conduct. Addressing the judge Thursday, she said, “I know this was a big mistake and this will never happen again.”

The airport had theft insurance and filed a $400,000 claim, which was paid, Craig said. Grabijas hired a civil lawyer to negotiate a settlement with the airport. She cashed in her retirement savings and sold her home to pay the airport nearly $65,000. The airport has agreed not to come after Grabijas for anymore money, Craig told the court.

Assistant Crown attorney Bryan Pillon said Grabijas caused the airport to hire outside accountants to perform an expensive audit.

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens told the Star at the time of Grabijas’s arrest, the auditors had recommended changes to how the airport handles cash. No one person is solely responsible for the collection, counting and depositing of cash anymore.

Pillon said the courts have been clear that embezzlement should be punished by time behind bars. “This was a breach of trust,” Pillon said.

Grabijas hung her head and wiped tears as Pillon spoke.

Before being led away by a court constable to begin serving her sentence, she hugged her lawyer, then asked the court’s permission to give her husband of 32 years a kiss goodbye.

The judge praised the couple for standing by each other. He told Grabijas she had fallen prey to “a temptation that was right in front of you.” Stealing the money seemed like an easy solution to her problems at the time, Dean told Grabijas. But the theft has only compounded her financial troubles, he said.

“There’s a lesson in this for all of us.”