Fraud is her way of life: Crown wants 7 years for Kelowna bookkeeper who swiped $500K

Megan O’Gorman wasn’t a certified chartered accountant when, in late 2016, she took a job working for Kelowna firm, Refresh Financial, as its accounting manager.

She left the firm in early 2018, having stolen $400,000, and moved on to take a job with real estate developer High Street Ventures as the accounting manager. 

Again, she flashed a resume that said she was an accountant, when in fact she’d dropped out of university after two years, and was barred from holding such a position, having been convicted of fraud.

Over the time she worked for the Kelowna companies, she put through hundreds of fraudulent transactions, using company credit cards, payroll, and forging signatures on company cheques. 

She pocketed $526,000 from both firms by the time a private investigator who’d been hired by an Albertan company tipped them off.

On July 18, a Kelowna courtroom heard lengthy details about how she did it.

“O’Gorman began lying in her adolescence. She has continued lying,” crown prosecutor Jessica Saris told the court. “Fraud is just a way of life for Ms. O’Gorman.”

During her time at the two Kelowna firms, O’Gorman, 34, made close to 900 unauthorized credit card purchases, forged signatures on almost 100 cheques, and transferred $30,000 from payroll into her own accounts.

As the person in charge of the money, she appears to have done it with relative ease.

She also used a colleague who thought they were a friend, and they became a part of the RCMP investigation.

The friend questioned how O’Gorman could maintain her lifestyle on her $60,000 a year job. She told him that she inherited some money.

On one occasion, they met in Vancouver where O’Gorman was staying at the Fairmont Hotel. She asked to use her friend’s credit card for the pre-authorization and told him accounting would sort it out later.

He was left with a $11,000 hotel bill for the three-night stay.

“Greed and personal gain were the motivating factors,” the Crown told the court. 

The court heard she spent the money on day-to-day living and there were no extreme examples given for what she had spent the money on.

The Crown said she didn’t gamble and was not addicted to drugs or alcohol.

The court heard how Megan Katherine O’Gorman, who also goes by the names Megan Weistra and Megan White, had ripped off numerous companies she’d worked for before she arrived in Kelowna.

In 2010, when she was 19 or 20, she was convicted for using a forged document while living in Edmonton. A few years later she was convicted of theft and in 2013 while in Sherwood Park, Alberta, was convicted for fraud and forgery. Each time she avoided jail and kept on scamming people while on probation. 

Her luck appears to have run out in 2021 when she was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for her time working as a bookkeeper at Ascot Property Management in Edmonton between 2012 and 2014. In that time, she ripped off close to $1 million.

She’s also been convicted of fabricating evidence, attempting to obstruct justice and false pretences.

In total, the court has ordered her to pay restitution of $1,025,508. She hasn’t paid.

“No fine, no probation, no court-ordered conditions, no restitution, no lengthy jail sentences will slow her down,” the Crown said.

The court heard how the companies had managed to get some of the money back through their insurance, but the damage caused wasn’t just financial.

O’Gorman’s actions caused huge amounts of stress and strained relationships. There were trust issues, and her actions had personally affected the employees.

The Crown said that although O’Gorman had been in custody for more than a year, she still kept telling lies.

“O’Gorman had presented as disingenuous and had shared conflicting information during meetings with corrections,” the Crown said.

The Crown said much of what O’Gorman told a pre-sentence report writer couldn’t be corroborated.

“She will say anything that she can to try to get the outcome that she desires,” Saris said. “She downplays and minimizes her blameworthiness at every opportunity, and even blames the rigours of the job and the stress of the job environment.”

Defence lawyer Emma Logue said the Crown statement wasn’t fair and that O’Gorman was plagued with anxiety and shame over what she had done.

“(She) has no desire to return to her old ways. She wants to build a life that contains a family, friends, and honesty,” the defence lawyer said.

The court heard O’Gorman grew up in Edmonton, splitting her time between her divorced parents.

“Ms. O’Gorman’s childhood cannot be described as happy, safe, or stable,” her lawyer said.

Her stepfather was violent. He’d spit on her and break her toys. He’d lock her in her room or outside for hours on end.

Seeing the abuse, her grandparents sent her to live with her father in Calgary when she was five years old.

“Unfortunately, this was not the relief that they had hoped it would be,” the lawyer said. 

Her father was an alcoholic and her stepmother would make her get undressed and physically punish her. She was sexually abused by her grandfather, but when she told her father he didn’t believe her.

Over the years, she shuffled from one parent’s home to the other’s.

“Neither of her parents took Ms. O’Gorman’s safety and healthy development seriously, nor were they caring in a way a parent ought to be,” Saris said. “Ms. O’Gorman realized she had to lie in order to get people to love her or to be her friend.”

Those lies stayed with her into adulthood and she had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

She met her ex-husband at age 19 and later completed two years of university.

The defence lawyer said O’Gorman was drinking heavily and using cocaine when the fraud happened. 

“O’Gorman was actively using substances to cope with the anxiety and stress of her situation,” the lawyer said.

Her drug use worsened since being in prison, where she began using meth and oxycodone regularly, although she was now sober.

The Crown wants her to serve seven years jail, the defence four to four and a half.

O’Gorman will be sentenced at a later date.