Coffin pleads guilty to fraud of $1.5 million

[Montgomery Burns]

Paul Coffin won't be going to prison on sponsorship fraud charges

The first person charged in the federal sponsorship scandal won't be going to prison.  Advertising executive Paul Coffin has been sentenced to a conditional sentence of two years less a day to be served in the community. Coffin pleaded guilty earlier this year to 15 fraud charges. The Crown had asked for a 34-month sentence while Coffin's lawyer had suggested what he received.

Coffin pleaded guilty in May to defrauding the federal government of $1.5 million between 1997 and 2002 for doing little or no work.

15 fraud charges against the govt, $1.5 million in tax free dollars (about $2.6 million before taxes), and all he gets is 2 years less a day of community service?!

This seems so wrong.

If I ripped off the govt/taxpayers for $1.5 million/2.6 million, I know I would get more than 2 years less a day of community service.

[cybercoma]

I hate life.

[B. Max]

It's such a joke. Gomery is running around asking people what they should do the next time these crooks get caught. The answer to that is to properly deal with the ones they've caught so far so there is less likely to be a next time.

[Argus]

I hate life.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You expected more? Why do you think he pled guilty. It was all arranged. Get it done quick, so the idiot public forgets again and the Liberals can sweep in to a majority.

[newbie]

Re the Sponsorship scandal: Okay, so first it was Chretien, then Martin, then the whole Liberal party, then Gomery himself, and now you blame the one person to have plead guilty. So now you blame the legal system. I'm surprised you haven't lumped Sheila Fraser in as well. See a pattern here?

[cybercoma]

Re the Sponsorship scandal: Okay, so first it was Chretien, then Martin, then the whole Liberal party, then Gomery himself, and now you blame the one person to have plead guilty. So now you blame  the legal system. I'm surprised you haven't lumped Sheila Fraser in as well. See a pattern here?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I stole money from you, what should be done to me?

[newbie]

Re the Sponsorship scandal: Okay, so first it was Chretien, then Martin, then the whole Liberal party, then Gomery himself, and now you blame the one person to have plead guilty. So now you blame  the legal system. I'm surprised you haven't lumped Sheila Fraser in as well. See a pattern here?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I stole money from you, what should be done to me?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd expect you to repay (as Coffin did) and be dealt with by the legal system. But I wouldn't blame your wife or family or anyone else but you.

[Guest eureka]

It would not be your theft, CC, but that you are from Windsor. That alone is worth a life sentence.

[Leader Circle]

Re the Sponsorship scandal: Okay, so first it was Chretien, then Martin, then the whole Liberal party, then Gomery himself, and now you blame the one person to have plead guilty. So now you blame  the legal system. I'm surprised you haven't lumped Sheila Fraser in as well. See a pattern here?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I stole money from you, what should be done to me?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd expect you to repay (as Coffin did) and be dealt with by the legal system. But I wouldn't blame your wife or family or anyone else but you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So delusional. It amazes me the ignorance of some people, deflecting the topic to make common theft acceptable as OUR GOVERNMENT!

Wasted Rock Ranger!

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear Montgomery Burns,

15 fraud charges against the govt, $1.5 million in tax free dollars (about $2.6 million before taxes), and all he gets is 2 years less a day of community service?!

This seems so wrong.

There seems to be some sort of 'sympathetic collusive victim' psychology about this.

If someone were to break into your house, and say, steal $20 off your kitchen table, most everyone would be mad as hell at being robbed. Then, the next day, you find out each and every house in your whole neighbourhood was robbed, people tend to say "Ok, I don't feel so bad now, because it happened to everybody".

There also seems to be adangerous trend of 'lenient precedent' that is being followed, across the board, for sentencing. (actually, I know why this is...it is simply a cost-saving measure)

[cybercoma]

It would not be your theft, CC, but that you are from Windsor. That alone is worth a life sentence.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is that a personal insult?

[Argus]

Re the Sponsorship scandal: Okay, so first it was Chretien, then Martin, then the whole Liberal party, then Gomery himself, and now you blame the one person to have plead guilty. So now you blame  the legal system. I'm surprised you haven't lumped Sheila Fraser in as well. See a pattern here?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I stole money from you, what should be done to me?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd expect you to repay (as Coffin did) and be dealt with by the legal system. But I wouldn't blame your wife or family or anyone else but you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Coffin pled guilty to defrauding the government of $1.5 million. He is required to repay $1 million, thus leaving him a $500,000 profit. Not bad money for doing a brief lecture tour to snickering college students.

Does anyone know who appointed this judge? I'm betting Jean Chretien.

[B. Max]

Re the Sponsorship scandal: Okay, so first it was Chretien, then Martin, then the whole Liberal party, then Gomery himself, and now you blame the one person to have plead guilty. So now you blame  the legal system. I'm surprised you haven't lumped Sheila Fraser in as well. See a pattern here?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I stole money from you, what should be done to me?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd expect you to repay (as Coffin did) and be dealt with by the legal system. But I wouldn't blame your wife or family or anyone else but you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Coffin pled guilty to defrauding the government of $1.5 million. He is required to repay $1 million, thus leaving him a $500,000 profit. Not bad money for doing a brief lecture tour to snickering college students.

Does anyone know who appointed this judge? I'm betting Jean Chretien.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There was some speculation this morning, might he be eligible for a government grant to conduct his lecture tour.

[Riverwind]

Paul Coffin won't be going to prison on sponsorship fraud charges

Just to contrast:

Radler gets 29 months in jail

Hollinger International insider David Radler has agreed to a 29-month jail term and a $250,000 (U.S.) fine in a plea bargain for pleading guilty to one count of mail fraud Tuesday in U.S. federal court.

article

I have become increasing pissed off at our justice system that seems to have forgetten that 'punishment and deterrance' are at least as important as 'rehabilitation'. I don't see the Coffin case a unique - there are hundreds of similar less high profile cases where joke sentences are handed out for some very serious offenses because the offender has 'no previous record'.

[August1991]

The judge in this case apparently took into account the fact that the government and Coffin came to an agreement whereby he would repay $1 million of the $1.5 million and, get this, Coffin will give speeches in universities about business ethics.

Coffin still has his advertising agency though, and its an agency that will clearly benefit from this exposure. I'll bet Coffin's lawyer will see his billings pick up too.

The Crown prosecutor intends to appeal this sentence. I heard him being interviewed and he made what I thought is the main point in this case. Coffin's personal situation is irrelevent. The sentence should have been about deterrence. If someone deliberately and knowingly steals money from the public purse, they should go to jail as a signal to other would be thieves. It is a public trust.

----

Something about this case. Will the people who gave Coffin the money do any time?

Edited September 20, 2005 by August1991

[Canuck E Stan]

Is anything being done to compensate the other $1/2 million that is still owed, or the lost interest of the whole $1.5 million. why not like Radler was there not a fine involved?

Canadian justice monopoly game card, Don't go to jail and collect $1/2 million dollars.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear August1991,

Something about this case. Will the people who gave Coffin the money do any time?

It is too late, they can now say that they were 'duped'. They should have been on the dock with the recipients, if the intention was to punish all wrongdoing.

[FTA Lawyer]

Does anyone know the full terms of Mr. Coffin's Conditional Sentence Order (CSO)? I have not yet been abel to find them.

If what has been reported in the mainstream media is it, then I agree it's way too leniant.

However, I won't automatically agree that a CSO is a "joke sentence." In many cases, the terms of a CSO can be even worse for an offender than jail.

For example, if an offender is in line for a 9 month jail sentence, for whatever crime, if he is a good boy in jail, he will be released after only 6 months, and will have little state-control over his liberty other than reporting to his parole officer.

The same offender could instead be given a CSO of 2 years less a day with various conditions to control his behaviour for the entire term of the CSO like house arrest, curfew, reporting, attending treatment or counselling, random drug and alcohol testing, community service, and so on. The conditions are limited pretty much only by the imagination.

And...if he breaches one of the conditions, the court can convert the CSO to jail time...for which he will receive no early release (i.e. he serves every day of the sentence, rather than 2/3 of a standard jail sentence).

The benefits of a CSO are that, for a first offender, or someone with high likelihood of being rehabilitated, they can continue to be contributing members of society and can be hopefully groomed back into line for the eventual completion of their sentence. At the same time, the taxpayer does not have to pay for their residency in an institution.

As for Mr. Coffin, I again say that for a CSO to be appropriate, it should have particularly onerous terms...and so far I have not seen terms that would fit that bill.

However, I would be surprised if he was not ordered to repay the full amount of money he admitted to defrauding from the feds. And if not, he can still be sued for the remaining $500,000.

As for what we know, the fact that he has already scraped and scrounged to repay $1,000,000 is pretty significant...he could have just said "come and get it" and played a game of hide and seek. Also, if his lectures to business schools prevent a new crop of entrepreneurs from taking their shot at the public purse...or better yet, motivate them to be whistleblowers when they see bad practices...then the taxpayer might get pretty good return on investment.

Anyway, those are some of my initial thoughts on this.

FTA Lawyer

[August1991]

He has to surrender his passport, there's a curfew and he must have all financial transactions for his firm go through a third party. It is reported that he has had to borrow from family and friends to come up with the $1 million. I think he is in his early 60s. I don't know how long these conditions apply.

I suspect that not going to jail was a major priority for him so his lawyers probably accepted many conditions to obtain that.

The benefits of a CSO are that, for a first offender, or someone with high likelihood of being rehabilitated, they can continue to be contributing members of society and can be hopefully groomed back into line for the eventual completion of their sentence. At the same time, the taxpayer does not have to pay for their residency in an institution.

I imagine that was the lawyers' line and the judge accepted it.

He will give speeches for free. I expect that he wants to go back to work and make some money. No doubt he has good contacts.

----

IMV, the more critical issue here is whether a future wheeler-dealer with government contracts will think twice before pushing the envelope. Based on what happened to Coffin, many might say that's an acceptable "worst case scenario" and go for the gusto. Ugh.

I still wonder whether anyone in the Liberal Party will have to negotiate a sentence, conditional or otherwise.

[Montgomery Burns]

Windsor Star editorial:

[...] [Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy] Boilard’s lenience is baffling.  It’s not as though the Criminal Code or judicial precedent precluded him from slapping Coffin with jail time. The maximum sentence for fraud over $5,000 is 10 years in prison. The Crown asked for 34 months.

Of 11,577 fraud convictions meted out in 2003 (the last year for which statistics are available), 3,972, or roughly one-third, led to jail time. Because Statistics Canada doesn’t compile rich detail about Canadian fraud sentences, it’s impossible to know the scale of these cons or the criminal backgrounds of their perpetrators. Such factors naturally affect sentencing.

However, a look back at recent Windsor fraud cases provides anecdotal evidence that run-of-the-mill con artists have been jailed for crimes less serious than Coffin’s.

In July, Jimis Odish, 22, was sentenced to a year behind bars (he’d already served four months) for defrauding several financial institutions of about $100,000 with fake credit cards.

Last October, Punit Thind, 27, was sentenced to a year in jail for bilking 49 computer customers out of nearly $100,000 with an internet fraud scheme. He had no record, pleaded guilty and apologized.

In February of 2004, a faux fortune-teller from Leamington was sentenced to five months in prison for convincing clients to give her nearly $100,000 in cash jewelry and furniture to ward off dark clouds and evil.

If cons to the tune of $100,000 can draw jail time, how could a fraud 15 times that size draw a community sentence? Especially when the crime was perpetrated against every taxpayer in Canada?  Coffin’s sentence not only fails to achieve the twin purposes of “denunciation and deterrence”—as Boilard absurdly insisted it did—it sends the message that defrauding the public is acceptable and that lenience is reserved for well-to-do types with government ties. [...]

[Montgomery Burns]

During the 1980s, Saskatchewan's "Progressive" Conservative Party was involved in a political scandal where they ripped off Saskatchewan taxpayers to the tune of $838,000.

Six of the PCers were sent to prison for a total of 11 years. Yes, I know that $838,000 in the 80s is worth more these days, but still....

[Minimus Maximus]

Does anyone know who appointed this judge? I'm betting Jean Chretien.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

PET himself back in 1977.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Columnists...22/1229662.html

What gets me about this is that the Liberal's claim that Coffin paid back all of the money. 1 million - 1.5 million= complete pay back. I guess this is the type of mathematics that brought us Adscam in the first place so why be surprised.

[FTA Lawyer]

I guess we'll have to wait and see if the Crown appeals the sentence. Seems to me they have no choice if they want to be seen to be acting in the public interest.

While I don't profess to know what might happen out there, back here in Alberta us criminal defence lawyers do our clients the worst disservice if we get them a sentence at trial that is way too lenient...because then the Crown appeals and the client is faced with the prospect of being re-sentenced by the Court of Appeal...and no-one wants to be sentenced by the Alberta Court of Appeal!

He who laughs last...

FTA Lawyer