Penticton Minor Hockey Association Scandal

[fluffy]

A story has been in the papers the last couple of days regarding a former Treasurer for the PMHA. The past treasurer, recently deceased from cancer, has been accused of embezzling in excess of $300,000 over a three year period from 2010 to 2013. Court action has been initiated against a number of people, including surviving family members, in an attempt to recover the missing funds but it is doubtful at this point just how successful that effort will be. This is going to be a hot topic for some time to come, the person involved was popular and well liked in the minor hockey community, which makes for some pretty high emotion in a betrayal of this nature.

http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/news/260349051.html

[mug48]

I personally believe someone involved with the PMHA has found a way to blame a poor deceased woman. The lawyer has even admitted her and family estate has nothing. The $315k is elsewhere, in my personal opinion.

[workthatwedo]

I agree that is seems awfully convenient that the deceased person is to blame. Mr. Lund explained that this appears to have been a very sophisticated embezzlement scheme. For something so well carried out, it certainly wouldn't seem unreasonable that part of the sophistication could entail pinning the embezzlement on someone. There definitely seems to be more to this story than what we are being told and it was encouraging to see (at the PMHA AGM) that there are many others that also think it doesn't all add up.

[Catz]

I will follow this. Thank you for the info.

[twobits]

I personally believe someone involved with the PMHA has found a way to blame a poor deceased woman. The lawyer has even admitted her and family estate has nothing. The $315k is elsewhere, in my personal opinion.

I believe that lawyer specified her estate has no assets. He is not saying the family has no assets. That is the problem in recovering money. The only way they could go after a house in the spouses name (or children's names) would be to prove that the embezzled funds were used to purchase it in whole or in part. They can also only go back so far and claim that transfers of assets were not at arms length. For example, if someone was facing imminent bankruptcy and transferred their house to someone else to essentially hide the asset from creditors, the courts can overturn such transactions as not being at arms length and essentially reverse the transaction making the asset available to creditors. If one or two years pass before court action, it severely clouds the definition of arms length.
If the house, or cars, have always been in the name of the spouse, good luck unless she personally wrote a cheque that paid off the mortgage or loans. Given the sophistication of the fraud, I seriously doubt she would have been that stupid. Try and trace cash payments against loans. Good luck proving where the cash came from. Could have collected bottles every weekend.
Penticton Minor Hockey will likely see very little if anything recovered unless they can prove the husband was complicit in the fraud.

[mug48]

Also, who the heck are the 5 John Doe's mentioned in the suit. Why are not their names made public? This whole thing seems hooky pooky to me. I do feel sorry for Mrs. Elder's family...my opinion only.

[Midnite]

If the accused was clever enough to avoid detection during the annual audits, hiding the assets would be a piece of cake.

[dogspoiler]

Doesn't it suprise anyone else that a minor hockey league has so much money that $315,000 can be taken in 3 yrs ?

[fluffy]

Also, who the heck are the 5 John Doe's mentioned in the suit. Why are not their names made public?

Friday's article in the Western News had some comments from the RCMP that certainly indicated they had reason to investigate the possibility of more people being involved than just the former treasurer. It doesn't seem likely to me that over $300,000 could be absorbed into a family budget over three years without raising some eyebrows somewhere, but just what that means could go in any number of directions. It's good that the RCMP are involved, they have better tools than anyone to get deeper into this matter.