Giesbrecht pleads guilty to fraud charges

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This article was published 27/04/2016 (2912 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg woman accused of storing six dead fetuses in a storage locker has admitted to an unrelated fraud charge that she blames on an “out-of-control” gambling addition.

Andrea Giesbrecht, 42, pleaded guilty on Thursday for bilking Manitoba’s Employment and Income Assistance of more than $5,300. She collected the money between December 2011 and May 2012 after lying to officials about her marital status and property ownership.

Giesbrecht was given a sentence of two months time already spent in custody, followed by two years of supervised probation.

“It’s aggravating she defrauded the public to feed her addiction,” said provincial court Judge Cynthia Devine. “She was not in financial need. She was gambling away the family’s resources.”

Giesbrecht also admitted to breaching terms of a previous probation order which banned her from going to any place where gambling occurs. She was caught at McPhillips Street Station casino in the fall of 2014, just weeks after admitting she scammed an elderly neighbour out of more than $7,000.

Giesbrecht was given a two-year suspended sentence with probation for that offence, which also heard how her gambling addiction had led her down a dangerous path.

The EI fraud actually occurred prior to that offence, but wasn’t discovered until after.

“More jail awaits her if she contemplates a trip to the casino, joining a card game or buying a lottery ticket,” Devine said Thursday. The conditions of Giesbrecht’ probation include a no-gambling clause.

Crown and defence lawyers told court Giesbrecht has been performing well in recent months while on bail in the community. She is participating in weekly gambling, parenting and life skills programs. Her sentence also includes an order to pay back the money she wrongly received.

A pre-sentence report painted Giesbrecht as a suburban soccer mom of two sons, married for 19 years and a Siloam Mission volunteer.

Giesbrecht’s legal troubles are far from over despite resolving this latest legal resolution — she is currently in the middle of her high-profile criminal trial surrounding the grisly October 2014 discovery at the U-Haul location on McPhillips Street.

Giesbrecht has pleaded not guilty to six counts of concealing a child’s body. Her trial began last week and has now been adjourned until later this summer. Her husband is expected to be the Crown’s next witness.

The trail has already heard Giesbrecht and her husband are the suspect parents of the five boys and one girl, who were nearly full-term and believed to have been born alive, possibly more than a decade ago. Their cause of death could not be determined due to the poor state of the remains.

Police originally cautioned Giesbrecht that she may be charged with murder, but that never occurred. A former friend testified last week how Giesbrecht would often talk about how she hated being pregnant, wished to keep her condition secret and wanted to self-abort.

Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky is challenging whether the state of the infants meets the legal requirement to prove the charges against his client.

Brodsky revealed in court last week his client’s medical records show she had 10 legal abortions between 1994 and 2011, in addition to giving birth to two boys who are now teenagers. The relevance of mentioning those abortions isn’t clear at this time but may emerge later once lawyers get into final arguments. There is no suggestion the remains in the storage locker are connected to those procedures.

www.mikeoncrime.com