A woman ordered to pay back $13,180 she defrauded from employers in Wekweètì and Whatı̀ is in a huge financial hole, owing $175,000 to a credit card and some family members.
Grace Maria Angel, 49, was sentenced last week to a 12-month conditional sentence after pleading guilty to two counts of breach of trust by a public officer.
In a period spanning 2009 to 2018, she was senior administrator for Wekweètì’s community government and later worked for the NWT Housing Corporation.
It emerged during sentencing at the Yellowknife Courthouse that the mother of two adult children was a victim of fraud herself, falling for an online romance scam with a man who persuaded her to send him money transfers.
In March 2017, as Angel was working as the housing manager in Whatı̀, she started chatting with a man on dating app Zoosk, court documents stated.
The man, using the name Ryan Logan, claimed to be a businessman from the United States who was expanding his work to the United Kingdom.
”After their first phone call, Grace realized that his accent didn’t sound American and was more Turkish,” stated the document. “She enquired about this and was given a reason that seemed fine to her.”
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She ended up sending him more than $108,000 through bank-to-bank and wire transfers, along with money orders in response to his various pleas, including a claim he had been stabbed and robbed of cash “while at a shipping…
