Condo fraudster gets four years in prison, 10 years to pay $3M

A 47-year-old con artist who stole $3 million from 13 area condo corporations while managing their buildings has been sentenced to four years in prison.

Brett MacKenzie Leahey will also have to pay a $3 million fine within 10 years of his release from penitentiary, Justice Al Cooper ruled Thursday.

Cooper said he’s confident that if Leahey applies the “intelligence he’s obviously blessed with” and the ingenuity he used to defraud his victims, he can pay the fine in time. But if not, he faces another 10 years in prison, the judge warned.

Leahey, who pleaded guilty Oct. 13, carried out the scam between 2009 and 2014. Halton police charged him last year.

Lorne Sabsay, his lawyer, argued Leahey should have 20 years to pay the $3 million. Crown prosecutor Harutyan Apel , however, asked for 10 years.

A clutch of defrauded condo owners watched a bailiff lead Leahey, dressed in a button-down shirt and jeans, from the prisoner’s box and out of the courtroom.

Given his pretrial custody, he has 39 months to serve in prison.

Arthur Joyce hired Leahey to manage his 15-unit complex on Harvester Road in Burlington.

“He’s a predator,” Joyce said outside court. “The question is what he is going to do when he does get out. Is he going to go right back at it and do the same thing?”

Norma Bowen, who lives in a 156-unit building on Warwick Court in Burlington, said her condo corporation was lucky, having caught Leahey early on.

“Not like some of these other poor people,” she said. “He didn’t touch our reserve fund.”

But Bowen wonders how Leahey will pay back what he stole given he had no assets that could be forfeited for restitution.

Det. Const. Derek Wilson, of the Halton Regional Police Fraud Unit, said that remains to be seen. However, the condo owners should feel some vindication in seeing Leahey heading to prison, Wilson added.

“There’s some sense of justice, I think, today for the victims to see him go back to jail.”

Wilson said the Leahey file was the biggest fraud case he’s seen during his four years on the fraud unit.

Leahey — who was convicted of a similar fraud in 2009 — employed a number of tactics to steal funds from corporations in Hamilton and Burlington.

That included misdirecting funds, receiving payments for the same work invoice, falsifying information on others and making unauthorized payments.

Michel St. Hilaire, a construction subcontractor Leahey hired, was fleeced of $238,443.

“I’m ashamed that I did the work for this company because I went in in good faith,” St. Hilaire said outside court.