Air Canada ripped off $2M by yoga pant-buying employee
Excessive spending at Lululemon shown
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/12/2019 (1570 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Meet Lululemon’s No. 1 customer. Chalsee Levreault blamed an addiction to opioids for a three-year fraud spree that cheated Air Canada out of more than $2 million, but a look at her credit card records shows the pull of a luxury lifestyle and an iconic yoga apparel brand was just as strong, a Winnipeg court has heard.
“It should have been blatantly obvious to anyone looking that she was spending well over her means,” provincial court Judge Wanda Garreck said before sentencing the former Air Canada finance agent to 4½ years in prison.
Levreault “got greedy with her choice to spend on an extravagant lifestyle,” the judge said Wednesday.
The 45-year-old woman pleaded guilty last summer to one count of fraud. Court was told the longtime Air Canada employee’s responsibilities included processing customer refunds. Her position allowed her access to “sensitive data,” including credit card information.
On 371 occasions, from April 2015 to June 2018, Levreault created false customer refunds for pre-existing flight passes, and then transferred the refunds to her 17 credit cards.
When arrested last February, Levreault told police she was addicted to opioids and was making cash withdrawals of up to $6,000 on her credit cards each week to pay her drug dealers.
That still left more than $1 million unaccounted for, Crown attorney Don Melnyk told court at an earlier sentencing hearing. Melnyk said a review of Levreault’s credit card statements during the relevant time period revealed a pattern of consumer excess that included $128,000 spent at Lululemon Athletica, $72,000 on cross-border shopping trips and $27,000 in online purchases.
“Her spending on personal items was excessive, to put it mildly,” Garreck said Wednesday, noting Levreault’s salary peaked at $54,000 a year during the time she was defrauding the airline.
Levreault stopped stealing from her employer in June 2018, after her daughter confronted her about her drug addiction and she sought counselling. Air Canada discovered the fraud a month later during an audit, which revealed Levreault’s login credentials were associated with all of the suspect transactions.
Garreck said while Levreault may have been addicted to drugs, she did not consider it a significant factor in the fraud.
“While she was someone who I accept used drugs and was addicted, she was also someone who was very capable and competent,” Garreck said. “When the writing was on the wall for her and she was confronted by her daughter, she was able to instantly choose to get help and stop using illegal drugs.”
Garreck ordered restitution, but admitted it’s “unlikely to be done any time soon, if at all. So she has had the benefit of over $2 million because of her crime.”
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Someone once said a journalist is just a reporter in a good suit. Dean Pritchard doesn’t own a good suit. But he knows a good lawsuit.