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High-rolling former civil servant pleads guilty to defrauding Sask government  
Feb 22, 2008 (source: Canadian Press)  
 
REGINA - A former civil servant with a "severe and entirely out of control" gambling addiction pleaded guilty Friday to defrauding the Saskatchewan government of hundreds of thousands of dollars to fuel her habit.  
 
Brenda Oates was an executive assistant in the Environment Department's resource stewardship branch when her crimes were uncovered in December 2004.  
 
No figures were discussed when Oates entered her plea in a Regina courtroom, but government reports have indicated up to $500,000 may have been misappropriated between April 1999 and December 2004. Court documents show all that and more was lost by Oates at a local casino during that time period.  
 
Other than offering her plea and assuring the judge she knew what she was doing, Oates said nothing in court. The case was adjourned to April 24 for sentencing. She left without speaking to reporters.  
 
Last August, her sister, Linda Billey, pleaded guilty to a related charge of fraud over $5,000. Billey, who lives in Alberta, was ordered to repay $26,600 and placed on probation for 18 months.  
 
Outside court, Crown prosecutor Greg Fellinger said the actual amount of money Oates made off with is still trying to be determined.  
 
"There is some ongoing negotiation between counsel and the ultimate numbers may still fluctuate somewhat."  
 
When provincial auditor Fred Wendel looked into the case in 2005, he, too, had difficulties determining just how much money disappeared.  
 
Wendel's office found a total of 200 bogus payments totalling $260,000. Another 350 payments totalling $240,000 were identified as suspicious, but further investigation was deemed "not practical."  
 
Where the money went is more clear.  
 
Documents filed Friday show Oates had a runaway gambling addiction. A psychologist's letter entered by her lawyer, Mike Walker, said Oates gambled to escape the pressures of her job.  
 
"At work Ms. Oates admits she fantasizes gambling and she used many excuses to leave work during the work day to gamble," Dr. Richard Lebell wrote. "She said she thought about gambling all day, every day."  
 
Oates exhibited many signs of problem gambling, including being irritable with family members when she couldn't gamble and chasing her losses day after day.  
 
A spread sheet police compiled of her gambling activities showed Oates made almost daily trips to the casino. She lost about $600,000 from April 1999 to December 2004, the records show.  
 
"Ms. Oates's gambling addiction can be ranked, in the opinion of the writer, as severe and entirely out of control," Lebell said in his letter. "This is the most severe case of problem gambling I have encountered in my 20 years of clinical practice."  
 
Fellinger declined to discuss how the money was taken from the government. But in Wendel's 2005 report he said the Environment Department paid for things such as meeting rooms, equipment rentals, catering, training, travel and translation services and didn't receive anything in return.  
 
A victim impact statement filed on behalf of the department says 9,500 transactions had to be reviewed and that took more than 3,400 man-hours to complete. Turnover of staff in the branch has been high since then and moral has been low, the statement says.  
 
"To this day there are still rumblings of, 'how could this happen?"'  
 
But the auditor also was highly critical of the department's practices. Wendel found that cheques were being initiated and approved, in some cases, by the same person, managers were not protecting their computer passwords and new suppliers were being added to the payment system without proper documentation.  
 
When news of the Oates case broke in 2004, it was revealed that she had a previous criminal fraud conviction in 1986 that the government didn't know about. She was given two years probation and ordered to pay $7,000 in restitution to a Regina clothing store in that case.  
 
Her case, and another one that surfaced around the same time involving a government employee with a hidden criminal past, led the government to widen its scope when checking the criminal histories of perspective employees. It also led to a governmentwide review of financial irregularities within the public service.