A former rural municipal official awaiting sentencing for stealing more than $500,000 from community coffers has been accused of forging a fake doctor’s note to get out of attending court.
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A former rural municipal official awaiting sentencing for stealing more than $500,000 from community coffers has been accused of forging a fake doctor’s note to get out of attending court.
A former rural municipal official awaiting sentencing for stealing more than $500,000 from community coffers has been accused of forging a fake doctor’s note to get out of attending court.
Amber Fisher, the former chief administrative officer for the Rural Municipality of Gilbert Plains, pleaded guilty to one count of theft over $5,000 last year.
Dauphin RCMP say investigators learned Fisher, 42, had submitted the note indicating she would be unable to attend court for her Sept. 2 sentencing, after she was seriously injured in a vehicle collision on July 22.
Former Gilbert Plains CAO Amber Fisher has been charged with defrauding the municipality. (Facebook)
Fisher’s lawyer submitted the note to the court and the judge adjourned her sentencing to a later date.
A court official followed up with the RCMP about the doctor’s note and Mounties determined it was forged. RCMP also said no police reports about Fisher being in a collision on that date have been filed in Manitoba or any other province.
Fisher, who resides in Grandview, was arrested Tuesday and charged with obstruction of justice, forgery and uttering a forged document. She was held in custody.
Fisher was fired in November 2022 after a report by accounting firm MNP found she had transferred approximately $532,000 from the municipality to her bank account in 2020 and 2021.
Council members were alerted by the municipality’s credit union in July 2021 that “substantial transactions” were detected transferring money from its account into Fisher’s, an agreed statement of facts filed with the court said when she pleaded guilty last August.
The credit union froze Fisher’s access to municipality bank accounts and she was suspended from work pending an investigation.
A week later, Fisher emailed a letter to two councillors “in which the accused provided a false explanation in (an) effort to explain away the concerns raised by (the credit union),” said the agreed statement of facts.
Source: Read the original article on www.winnipegfreepress.com
