At St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Fallowfield, Ottawa, a small claims deputy judge plead guilty to stealing money from the church over a year 8 period, starting in 2003, reports the Ottawa Citizen.
The man in question, Ronald Houlahan, at the time was a lawyer and chair of the St. Patrick’s Fallowfield cemetery committee. Houlahan admits to writing cheques that would have been used by the church to pay off his own bills. Even going as so far to use money that would have been meant for burial plots were put right into his personal finance accounts.
Assistant Crown attorney, John Semenoff explained that only 50 payments of the 269 contracts for sale of burial plots did not go through the cemetery account. Making about $72, 721 unaccounted for.
Houlahan was responsible for also depositing money into a perpetual care maintenance fund for the cemetery and its needs. An amount of each sale for the burial plots was supposed to make it into the account, however, they never did. Without Houlahan putting in the money, the account was short $173, 695. He also did not submit tax returns or legal reports, even though he was legally required to do them.
Houlahan was later found out for his actions when in 2011 during the summertime, the director of cemeteries, Benoit Bariteau contacted Houlahan, and brought up discrepancies in the account reports. When Houlahan assured Bariteau everything was fine, Bariteau then contacted the parish priest and had him go over the financial information as well.
By August 2011, Houlahan was removed from his standing. Right before handing over the records, he did one more act. Houlahan deposited a cheque of $3, 435.11 to cover the exact amount of money charged to his credit card to cover the cost of a machine made for lowering coffins on the property of the church.
An audit was then held by the archdiocese in which was found that $365,000 could not be accounted for. The Crown gave Houlahan the benefit of the doubt by stating that some of the money could have been through honourariums and others that could not prove to be stolen.
By the end of the audit, the court was given the total amount of $260,000 of invoices for services that Houlahan had provided. Semenoff explained that Houlahan was trying to account for some of the missing money.
The final answer: the Crown and the defence agreed that Houlahan had taken $250,000. Upon being sentenced, Houlahan’s lawyer stated that he intended to pay back $70,000 and would later pay back the rest of the owing money.
Houlahan’s sentence hearing was scheduled for April 21.