A daycare owner who embezzled thousands of dollars in tax credits intended for parents faces new charges, this time for defrauding the IRS and several banks of nearly $1.9 million.
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“She defrauded various financial institutions, the Canada Revenue Agency and Revenu Québec,” by fraudulent means, we can read in the summons targeting Fatima El Boukhari and which has just been made public at the Montreal courthouse.
This is a new threat that has fallen on the 49-year-old fraudster, less than two weeks after being found guilty of another fraud where she had tried to blame the parents of children who attended her daycare.
“His testimony was incoherent, laborious, and, it must be said as they are, absurd,” commented Judge Salvatore Mascia.
At the time of the crimes, from 2016 to 2022, El Boukhari owned the Aux coin des ami(e)s daycare, rue Hochelaga. Her establishment was private, but she made it appear that it was subsidized.
Courtesy photo
Fake tax credits
She then filed false tax credit claims in the parents’ names. The money was deposited into their bank accounts, but she arranged for the amounts to be immediately transferred to the daycare.
“All parents thought that child care costs would be $8 per day, and that the government would pay the balance [qui revenait à 48$ quotidiennement]», Explained the judge.
And because El Bakhouri filled out his returns with bogus information, the parents had no way of knowing they were being defrauded. They learned about it when the tax authorities turned to them to reimburse the amounts granted in their names.
In this case, the woman will return later for pleadings on the sentence to be imposed on her.
Except that, at the same time, the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy was also investigating the lady, for frauds which allegedly occurred in 2019. And this week, the federal Crown amassed enough evidence to accuse her again.
According to the summons, she allegedly defrauded $695,000 from “various banking institutions”, $538,000 from the federal tax authorities, and $643,000 from Revenu Québec.
El Boukhari is due to appear in court in December. Until then, she will have to go to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police station to have her accused photo and fingerprints taken.
– With Ian Gemme
