A Toronto woman who embezzled $426,000 from a team headed by one of the world's top heart surgeons has been given a 15-month jail sentence and ordered pay back all the money.
Lynn Koven, who earned more than $100,000 a year as an administrator in the University Health Network, wrote 203 fraudulent cheques to herself over eight years, the Toronto Star reported.
The "trusted" 27-year employee betrayed her employers, and her actions included forging the signature of respected surgeon Dr. Vivek Rao on 84 of the fraudulent cheques, court heard Friday.
The embezzled money was siphoned from the team's Academic Enrichment Fund, used for education and cutting-edge research, the Star reports. The fund was so depleted from the fraud that four researchers had to be laid off and its activities were put on hold for two years.
Koven, a 52-year-old mother of two, has only been able to find work at a garden centre making $10 an hour since losing her job.
After Koven made a tearful apology and was lead away in handcuffs, Dr. Tirone David, the Order of Canada officer who leads a highly respected team of surgeons at Cardiovascular Surgical Associates, whose books she once managed with his complete trust, said there were no winners in the ordeal.
"She lost, we lost. It's a very sad case," he said, according to the Star.
Koven's lawyer, Howard Goldkind, asked the judge for a term of house arrest, saying the once high-performing employee was affected by stress and alcohol abuse during a five-year affair with one of the surgeons.
"She tells me that she lost her sense of reality," Goldkind said.
The Crown had asked for a sentence of two years less a day, saying the large-scale breach of trust cannot be tolerated.
Koven pleaded guilty to one count of fraud in February. Her actions became known in 2005 when a bank account manager notified the team of two $5,834 cheques she had written to herself.
The cheques had the signature of a surgeon and were not related to any legitimate expense.
