Woman, 73, jailed for theft
REGINA — A 73-year-old woman with no previous criminal record has been handed a 21-month jail sentence for stealing more than $1 million from clients of her payroll business.
Geraldine Maloa Williams previously pleaded guilty to theft over $5,000 in connection with a scheme in which almost 40 Regina individuals, corporations and businesses lost money. She returned to Regina Provincial Court on Thursday for sentencing.
Crown prosecutor Jerome Tholl and defence lawyer Robert Skinner jointly proposed the 21-month sentence which, after hearing submissions, Judge Kenn Bellerose agreed to impose.
“There’s really very little explanation for your conduct other than just basically you’re being dishonest and not recognizing reality as you find yourself in,” Bellerose told Williams.
Court heard Williams had been running a business called Willrun Payroll Services Inc. in Regina which provided services for clients that included figuring out how much clients’ employees owed in taxes, Canada pension and employment insurance and submitting those amounts to Revenue Canada.
Williams’ business eventually started running into problems financially and she had trouble covering her expenses. To try to prop up her suffering business, Williams would take advantage of the money coming in from clients by, for instance, using employees’ CPP and EI contributions to pay her expenses rather than submitting the money immediately to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).
She made it work for a while — as long as a decade, court heard — by entering into something similar to a Ponzi scheme in which she’d take from new money coming in from clients to pay the CRA the funds owed by clients whose cheques she was already dealing with. But eventually, payments to the CRA weren’t just delayed, they were short or, at times, non-existent.
Tholl said Williams couldn’t keep it up indefinitely and, with money not coming in, the CRA began contacting Williams’ clients to find out what was going on. The illegal activity also led to clients’ paycheques bouncing.
“Everything came crashing down at that point,” Tholl said.
Williams tried to deal with the situation by lying to clients about where their money had gone, by attempting unsuccessfully to arrange a personal line of credit and even by pinning her hopes on winning the lottery. By the time the scheme was brought to an end in October 2008, clients had lost a total of $1,008,272.21.
Skinner admitted he had trouble making sense of his client’s actions, questioning why she didn’t simply bring things to an end early on rather than continuing on with her sinking business.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said, adding Williams had worked “extremely hard” at making the business work.
Skinner said his client is remorseful, noting she’d been taking the money solely to help her struggling business and not to make a profit for herself.
Williams took a moment to apologize for her actions, saying, “I’m just very, very sorry for all of this and to all of those people, every one. Every one.”
Skinner said the jail term will be tough on Williams and she hopes to “regroup and try to get on with the rest of her life” once she’s out.
The sentence also includes a stand-alone restitution order for the amount stolen, although Bellerose didn’t sound hopeful Williams would ever be successful in repaying it. Bellerose also suggested she consider writing letters of apology to her victims.