The cases resulted from reports by the Town of Virden’s CAO in September 2023 that there appeared to be ongoing fraud at Prairie Gateway Tourism. Park had been employed full-time with the Town of Virden economic development office for four years, ending in April 2021 and remained contracted with Prairie Gateway Tourism until September 2023.
According to Crown attorney Ron Toews, Park worked from home and was in charge of the financial books and the only one who had access to the organization’s online banking. From March 2022 to September 2023, she fraudulently e-transferred herself $18,000.
That is not all, unfortunately.
In January 2023, Deloraine Minor Ball president Paul Artz was notified by a local business that the organization had an outstanding bill, prompting Artz to take deeper look into their finances, which were supposedly being looked after by Park. She had been treasurer for the organization for around a decade at that point.
It turns out that between 2017 and 2023, she had embezzled more than $35,000 from the local association. Deloraine Minor Ball will never know exactly how much was taken, since the bank’s records only go back to 2017 and no books were turned over.
In a community impact statement presented by Artz, he said that that a lot of kids and families have been affected by Park’s actions, and that for many years the players either did without or used outdated, unsafe equipment because Deloraine Minor Ball was “consistently broke”. Despite the teams constantly holding fundraisers, Artz said he “naively thought” that is just what small town sports organizations had to do in order to break even.
Although Park came to court with letters of support from her mother, a friend, and her current employer, Toews recommended that she spend 15-18 months behind bars. He said that conditional sentences did not seem to be doing the trick to deter white-collar crime such as this, since this was the third case he has been involved in in the past 14 months.
Her lawyer Anthony Dawson came to her defence, though, and told the court that she has given him the full amount to be returned and that she was struggling with being the single earner in her household, as well as a lifelong alcohol addiction.
Park wrote a letter of apology and said she is remorseful of her actions, and while Judge John Combs elected not to give her jailtime, he told her that she had a lot of time to consider whether her actions were right or wrong, and that her “long-lasting pattern of thefts” had affected many people. He said he was satisfied that a conditional sentence would send the message to Park and other would-be criminals.
For the charges of Fraud over $5,000 with respect to Prairie Gateway Tourism (from March 9, 2022 to September 4, 2023), Park pled guilty and was sentenced to a Conditional Sentence Order of six months, to be served consecutively. She has to pay a victim surcharge of $200 and restitution to the amount of $18,324.57.
For the charges of Fraud over $5,000 with respect to Deloraine Minor Ball Association (from January 1, 2017 to January 27, 2023), Park pled guilty and was sentenced to a Conditional Sentence Order of 18 months, bringing the total duration of the Order to two years less one day. She has to pay another victim surcharge of $200 and restitution to the amount of $35,324.57.
by JACQUIE MAYNARD, Recorder staff