Fraud trial begins for former city auditor

The witness list for the trial of a former city auditor accused of embezzling $36,000 reads like a who’s who of Windsor city hall. While the usually faceless finance workers and auditors who toil at the city testified one-byone Monday in the trial of Angela Berry, waiting outside the courtroom were city CAO Onorio Colucci, director of operations Mark Winterton, former executive director of parks and facilities John Miceli and retired manager of forestry and horticulture Bill Roesel. The hallways of the Superior Court building resembled an airport waiting room as legions of city managers and auditors from KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, all subpoenaed to testify, waited to tell what they knew and when.

Berry is on trial for fraud, charged criminally in December 2015 after being escorted out of city hall months earlier. A former auditor, she was working as a parks operations asset analyst. Bobbi-Jo Reive, who now works for the Town of Amherstburg, testified she was Windsor’s financial planning administrator for parks in February 2015, the city’s yearend.

“I noticed there was an account that I didn’t expect any activity in for the last quarter,” Reive said. The account had been set up for Miceli for projects “outside the typical budget,” Reive said. There was recent activity in the account, despite Miceli having left the city for a new job in Amherstburg months earlier.

Reive said she called a clerk to get copies of the invoices that related to the payments. They all came back to a company called D & D Professional Services.

Reive testified she called around to supervisors, including Miceli at his new office in Amherstburg town hall. None had even heard of the company.

The invoices, approved for payment, all bore the same stamp — No. 700.

That stamp belonged to Berry. According to documents made exhibits at trial Monday, Berry had authorized payment of 15 separate invoices from September 2014 to January 2015 totalling $35,923.77. City worker Monika Grant said she approved four invoices for Berry. It was year-end and she wanted to clear out payables before leaving for vacation.

She said Berry brought her the invoices and Grant stamped them despite the documents being scant on details on what work was performed.

“She said she was still waiting to hear back what these items were,” Grant testified.

Grant said she expected Berry would have “pulled” the invoices and prevented them from being paid if she had been unable to get those details. “I probably didn’t look closely at them at the time.” Some of the invoices had handwritten notes on them saying the cheques should be left for pickup at the city ’s McDougall Avenue building, and marked to the attention of Berry.

“I doesn’t strike me as overly odd,” Grant said.

Grant said Berry had once introduced her to Danielle Gadoury, one of the partners of D & D. Grant, who throughout her testimony smiled over at Berry, said Gadoury was someone Berry knew personally. Grant testified she was placed on a paid leave while the payments to D & D were investigated. Once the investigation was complete, she was suspended for two weeks. Kevin Campagna, who worked as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers at the time, said Berry could never provide any documents or any “adequate explanation” for the payments to D & D. During questioning by defence lawyer Linda McCurdy, he bristled at the suggestion that he had “badgered” Berry.

“I did not walk into this situation believing anyone did anything wrong.”

Berry’s trial is scheduled before Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas for five days.