Fraudulent schemes | A lenient sentence for a former school board director

A former executive who orchestrated a fraudulent scheme in a school board received an exceptionally lenient sentence on Tuesday. According to the judge, Caroline Mastantuono does not need another “sanction”, since she has been the target of negative media coverage.

“The unfavorable media coverage had consequences that go beyond what would be expected for such an offense and for the profile of the accused,” concluded Judge Salvatore Mascia on Tuesday at the Montreal courthouse.

While the Crown asked for a sentence of 15 to 18 months of home confinement due to the numerous aggravating factors, the judge instead showed great leniency towards the offender by imposing an unconditional discharge, the sentence the least severe of the Criminal Code.

In practice, Caroline Mastantuono will therefore have no criminal record, since an absolution is equivalent to an absence of conviction. According to the judge, a “reasonable and well-informed” person would not lose confidence in the justice system due to the granting of this absolution.

This is the second time this fall that Judge Mascia has granted an absolution to a civil servant caught by the Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit (UPAC). Former City of Montreal manager Sadek Lazzouzi also got off with a slap on the wrist, because he had “learned his lesson” and his cause was supposedly “highly publicized”.

Caroline Mastantuono, 61, pleaded guilty in mid-May to counts of making forgeries, using counterfeit documents and breach of trust by a public official by defrauding the Department of Immigration and the School Board Lester-B.-Pearson.

At the time of the crimes, Caroline Mastantuono was director of the international department of the Lester B. Pearson School Board. According to the admitted facts, she ordered her employees to create false documents and submit them to the Department of Immigration in order to encourage the recruitment of Indian students.

This scheme mainly benefited Naveen Kolan, the owner of a foreign student recruitment agency, who then invoiced the School Board.

Caroline Mastantuono gained nothing from her scheme, according to the judge. His only motivation was apparently to help foreign students obtain their certificate of acceptance from the government, the judge noted.

Between her dismissal and her arrest, Caroline Mastantuono set up a company in 2017 specializing in the recruitment of Indian students, Rising Phoenix. It had signed agreements with several private colleges in Quebec. She then opened her own college in 2020.

Everything collapsed following his arrest in November 2020, since the banks stopped financing his projects. However, according to the judge, it is essentially the media who are to blame for the decline of the delinquent’s business, since they made a link between her crimes at the School Board and her “legitimate” business.

Around twenty relatives filed letters to the Court to portray the offender as a person of “great integrity”, “altruistic” and “full of compassion”. The judge also emphasizes that the offender “persevered” despite adversity by enrolling in a cooking school.