Former medical secretary accused of fraud must repay more than $400,000 to her elderly former bosses

A former secretary at a Montreal medical clinic accused of defrauding her elderly bosses will have to reimburse them $400,000 for having collected rent owed to them, taken from their bank accounts and obtained a loan by threatening them.

As soon as she was hired at the Pie-IX medical clinic in February 2019, Thi Phuong Mai Tran sought to make herself indispensable by increasing the number of tasks, some of which were not required.

She was quickly seen as “a future manager” of the medical clinic by the D^r Ngoc Lang Nguyen and his partner Thi Mai Trinh Phan, who until then held this position.

The elderly couple was not very skilled with technology, M^me Phan doesn’t even have an email address.

Two months after his arrival, Tran mentioned to the D^r Nguyen that his partner “performed her tasks poorly and that she could perform them much better than her,” we mention in the judgment recently rendered at the Montreal courthouse.

The owner of the clinic since 1983 then asked Mr.^me Phan to abandon her duties and transfer them to the new employee.

Various transfers

At this moment, D^r Nguyen did not know that Thi Phuong Mai Tran had already started paying himself higher salaries than those agreed to when he was hired.

She then obtained electronic access to all the bank accounts of the clinic located in the Saint-Michel district, in addition to the personal accounts of the couple and their children. To do this, she presented herself as their daughter at the branch of the financial institution.

In just one year, Tran had also appropriated $50,000 in rent collected from a convenience store and a jewelry store which occupied premises belonging to the D^r Nguyen.

She also obtained a $200,000 loan “using undue pressure” while she had an intimate relationship with her boss. The money came from the D’s joint account^r Nguyen et de M^me Phan.

The latter had granted the loan after Tran had “threatened to cause the departure of all the employees to thus cause the bankruptcy of the Clinic”, we indicate in the judgment.

Tran, who claimed to have received a donation, however quickly refunded a quarter of it.

“This sum of $50,000 likely comes from cash paid by certain commercial tenants and pocketed by Tran,” noted Judge Andres C. Garin.

Tran had even directly transferred $27,400 from different bank accounts to his own.

Fraud discovered

Two children of the couple finally discovered the pot of roses when they noticed that sums had disappeared from the accounts intended to pay for their studies abroad.

Montreal police were alerted and arrested Tran the next day.

In her handbag, agents found $10,000 in cash and photocopies of Ngoc Lang Nguyen’s identity documents, it is mentioned in the civil judgment.

Thi Phuong Mai Tran, 46, was charged with fraud in 2021 and is still awaiting her criminal trial, scheduled for next spring.

But in the meantime, she will have to reimburse her former boss and his family more than $273,000 in damages, in addition to paying extrajudicial costs which amount to nearly $150,000. The clinic has since closed its doors.