Thursday, March 28, 2024
  • CWRE 2024 - Leaderboard
  • Keith Walking Floor - Leaderboard - Sept 2021
  • Dentec - Leaderboard - 2023 - Updated
  • Procore - Leaderboard - Jan 2022
  • IAPMO R&T Lab - Leaderboard
  • Revizto - Leaderboard - March and April
  • Premier Leaderboard - updated Nov 19
November 10, 2017

Former project manager at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital sentenced to house arrest for maintenance scam

A former project manager at the Jewish General Hospital has been sentenced to house arrest for his role in a scam where companies hired to do maintenance billed the institution for work that was actually done on the homes of at least three of the hospital’s administrators.

Jeffrey Fields, 57, a resident of the Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, pleaded guilty in March to violating two counts of the federal Excise Act and to related violations of the provincial Tax Administration Act.

After having been presented with a common suggestion on Wednesday, by defence lawyer Daniel Lighter and a lawyer representing the prosecution, Quebec Court Judge Claude Leblond agreed to give Fields a 12-month conditional sentence that will involve house arrest. Fields was also ordered to pay a total of $16,000 in fines.

While explaining how the lawyers reached the common suggestion, Lighter told Leblond Fields has multiple sclerosis and is undergoing therapy for it.

“Since I have known him, he has lost a lot of weight and his speech has become slurred,” Lighter said.

Blond also agreed with a request from Lighter that his client be given two years to pay the fines because he is unable to work.

Between 2008 and 2013, Fields allowed companies that were hired to do small scale maintenance to bill the hospital for work that was actually done on private residences. Subcontractors were also able to bill the hospital for hours of work that were not done, including during periods when the subcontractors were out of the country on vacation.

Keep reading in the Montreal Gazette