By Patrick Burles - @Patrick Burles on Twitter

Adina Barbour Gets 5-Years for Mortgage Fraud

Aug 19, 2016 | 4:31 PM

LETHBRIDGE – After almost six years before the courts, 49-year old Adina Barbour has finally been sentenced for a mortgage fraud totaling more than $2-million.

Justice R. Jerke handed Barbour five years in prison Friday afternoon (Aug 19), along with an order to provide a sample of her DNA and a restitution order.

As part of the restitution order, Barbour will have to repay $7,500 to one of her victims. The nearly $470,000 that was lost by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation was not included, as Justice Jerke stated that Barbour likely wouldn’t be able to repay it, as she is already $200,000 in debt. He added that the exact number of their loss was also difficult to determine.

As the CMHC is a Crown corporation, Canadian taxpayers will be the ones to cover the loss.

“By your conduct you have brought many people to a very dark place,” Justice Jerke told Barbour during the sentencing hearing. “You have wounded members of your family… You have disgraced yourself.”

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Outside the courthouse, Crown Prosecutor, Steven Johnston, said he’s hopeful the sentence will send a strong message to the community.

“Mortgage fraud is a very serious crime, and as Justice Jerke pointed out, it has a very real effect on the Canadian economy, on the Alberta economy,” explained Johnston. “When people fake and lie in their mortgage applications, everyone is a victim of that, and for that reason, if you do it and you’re detected, you’ll go to jail.”

Barbour was first charged in December of 2010, for obtaining nine mortgages under the names of other individuals without their knowledge. Her victims included her parents and sister, her friends, a colleague at Lethbridge College and two of her students. Johnston pointed out that while the financial losses were covered by insurance, it has done damage to their credit ratings.

The case had been marked by years of delays, with Barbour going through five lawyers before finally being forced to represent herself at trial.

That was then followed by a dramatic mistrial application – which was dismissed – that came just before the sentencing hearing.