The former accountant for Softball BC is in jail after she confessed to stealing more than $400,000 from the association and then gambling it all away.
Karline Elliott, 58, was sentenced in Surrey provincial court to three years in prison after pleading guilty to embezzling the cash over a two-and-a-half-year period. All of the stolen cash was lost to casinos.
"She essentially threw the money away, knowing that she could never, ever pay it back. There is a very high moral culpability in this case. Her conduct deviates substantially from the norms of society, which require trust in so many aspects of our lives, and the harm caused was substantial," Judge Peder Gulbransen wrote in his reasons for sentence.
Elliott was also ordered to pay the full amount stolen in restitution to Softball BC
According to court documents, the Port Hardy mother of six had almost exclusive access to the softball association's funds between 2006 and 2009, and was the only person able to do online banking for the group.
Softball BC only brought in about $100,000 per year in net income, but Elliott stole as much as $204,000 in a single fiscal year by transferring it to her personal account. She also applied for fraudulent GST refunds and transferred that money to the same account.
The theft was discovered by the association's vice president of finance, who was hired to fill a long-standing vacancy in the fall of 2007. He started asking pointed questions about discrepancies in the books in 2009, and late that year, Elliott confessed to stealing the money and admitted to having a gambling addiction.
The former accountant, who suffers from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, told her boss that she had no idea how much she had stolen, and estimated the total at less than half of the actual amount.
When Elliott's sentence was announced, the softball association's president Dennis Bidin released a statement describing the process as a "long and difficult time" for the group.
"I can attest to the tremendous amount of staff and volunteer time that this unfortunate circumstance has taken over the last year," he said.
The association now owes the government $143,315 for the ill-gotten GST refunds, and spent about $62,000 to uncover the embezzlement.
The Certified General Accountants Association of B.C. issued a public advisory about Elliott when she was charged in April 2010. She resigned her association membership three months later.
