70 year old former employee defrauded RBG of $350K, CEO says

Staff at the Royal Botanical Gardens believe a 70-year-old former staff member has defrauded the ecological site of about $350,000, the company's CEO says.

"When I first heard about it, I was absolutely dumbfounded," RBG CEO Mark Runciman told CBC Hamilton. "It has been hard on a lot of the staff here."

The RBG said in the release the former long-time employee "exploited her professional knowledge of RBG's internal financial system" between May 2007 and May 2012. She retired about a year ago from her job at the gardens, where she had worked for over 20 years, Runciman says.

After she retired and a new employee took her place, evidence started popping up that money from a corporate credit card had been siphoned off in small amounts over the years, Runciman says. "When that happened, we called police right away."

It was the woman's job to oversee the spending on this credit card, he added. "She was responsible in her position of the financial systems," Runciman said. "She was very careful to hide the theft."

Runciman says the RBG believes this is an isolated incident. It has been really hard on the garden's staff, he says. "It does have an effect on us all. This is really tough on us."

The woman has been charged with three counts of fraud over $5,000. Sheis set toappear in a Milton court onJune 5.