Manitoba judge slams court payment system after exonerating cashier accused of stealing $16K

A Manitoba judge has acquitted a provincial court cashier accused of pocketing thousands of dollars in fine payments, calling the court's payment system outdated and "concerning."

In a decision given Thursday, Manitoba provincial court Judge Rachel Rusen found a cashier at the provincial court counter in Winnipeg not guilty of one count of fraud of over $5,000 and one count of theft over $5,000 in connection with 16 payments made to the court from 2018 to 2020.

The cashier — who was responsible for receiving court-ordered payments, completing specific documents, issuing receipts and balancing payments — was accused of stealing over $16,000 through the 16 payments.

A provincial revenue policy analyst's investigation concluded that the cashier "intentionally completed misleading paperwork and deliberately took missing cash payments" after an audit discovered 178 incidents where transactions were not recorded, Rusen's decision says.

However, Rusen said the evidence was not convincing enough to show that the cashier had any part in the stolen funds, or that any money was even missing.

"I am convinced that the reliability of the investigation itself is flawed," she wrote.

"I am firmly of the opinion that the payment system at the provincial court counter was at all material times archaic and problematic."

The investigation began after the revenue manager of the Winnipeg law courts found a discrepancy on one fine card showing an $1,800 cash payment was received at the provincial court counter in June 2019, but neither of the two cashiers working that day recorded it.

Although the initials of the accused cashier were on the receipt issued to the person who paid the $1,800, Rusen says that receipt is from a series that is not included in the receipt notebook, and the cashier assigned to that series is unknown.

"I cannot be certain who did what, and when, and it would be hazardous to convict for this incident with the evidence I accept," Rusen wrote.

The other cashier working that day described previous instances to the court when she had used receipts out of order, which were assigned to another cashier, and had also accepted a payment but did not log it in her daily journal.

The fact that one cashier was charged while the errors of another were not found to be a result of theft or fraud "concerns me," Rusen wrote, adding that they could not conclude that the $1,800 transaction was "anything other than a similar deviation from best practice or standard."

"The evidence establishes that many documents are unsigned and that what is written in a fine card can be wrong," she wrote.

'Concerning' payment process

During the trial, Crown prosecutors argued that the cashier stole the $1,800, and in several other instances, collected payments and fraudulently failed to record them.

But the number of missing payments that the Crown claimed the cashier was involved in dropped over the course of the court proceedings.

"By the time the trial ended, the Crown abandoned all but 16 of the 178 incidents," Rusen's decision says.

The Crown divided the 16 incidents into three categories: the initial $1,800 transaction, transactions without corresponding entries in any cashier's daily journal, as well as other transactions where convicted people paid their fines in a mix of cash and debit payments, but the cash payments weren't recorded.

"While it is concerning that a cashier's daily journal records a debit payment and not a cash payment when a fine card indicates both, I find the entire payment process at the provincial court counter concerning from the lens of accuracy," Rusen wrote.

The defence argued prosecutors had not established a burden of proof for either charge against the cashier, and that a conviction would be "dangerous" as there was no handwriting expert to determine whether the cashier actually signed the relevant documents.

The defence said that given the low ratio of irregularities compared to the number of cashier transactions during that two-year period, the only reasonable conclusion was "error within a level of tolerance."

Rusen did not agree with the defence's argument that the provincial revenue policy analyst had a confirmation bias against the accused cashier.

"She was clear that she focused solely on locating cash payments indicated on fine cards and she readily admitted that sometimes fine cards were inaccurate," Rusen wrote.

"She admitted that she [found] a payment for which she originally thought was part of a fraud and theft."