A former Nanaimo Community Hospice Society executive director has been ordered to serve jail time and repay more than $106,000 for defrauding a Kelowna-based charity.
Susan Maureen Steen was charged for numerous offences between the summers of 2012 and 2013, including fraud over $5,000 on July 13, 2013. She pleaded guilty to the fraud charge and in provincial court in Vancouver on Wednesday, she was handed an eight-month prison sentence and a restitution order for $106,000 by Judge Nancy Phillips.
Charges relate to missing money from Central Okanagan Hospice Association. According to court documents, she is alleged to have stolen up to $109,000 via charges to the association’s credit card between July 2012 and April 2016.
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Steen was with Nanaimo hospice society between December 2016 and June 2017 and charged for similar crimes. She pleaded guilty to defrauding Nanaimo hospice and was sentenced in provincial court in Nanaimo last December to a four-month prison sentence and ordered to repay Nanaimo hospice more than $17,000, according to Judge Ted Gouge’s ruling.
Melanie Joanne Gray, another woman charged in the Okanagan hospice incident, was sentenced to five months in jail, with 24 months’ probation, and was ordered to repay more than $69,000 in March.
– with files from Kelowna Capital News
