A B.C. Supreme Court Justice has ordered a Vanderhoof man to pay a maker of log processing machines $713,600 for his role in a fraudulent procurement scheme.
The total amounts to 20 per cent of the $3.4 million that Robert Lew Taylor helped a senior manager at Delta-based Optimil Machinery Inc. siphon from his employer, plus $27,406 that Taylor failed to remit in GST collected from the business.
According to a Feb. 24 decision from Justice Bruce Elwood, Taylor was selling office computers when he first met the manager, Shane Braddick, in 2000. They developed a "workaround" to Braddick’s limited authority on what he could purchase for Optimil. Braddick would place an order with Taylor's company and Taylor would acquire the equipment but invoice Optimil only for equipment that was within Braddick’s authority.
Braddick did not benefit from that scheme, but it evolved into ones involving programmable logic controllers - industrial computers that control and optimize the performance of a machine - in which he did. At various times, Braddick ordered parts Optimil did not require, sold surplus parts from the business' inventory and approved payments for parts his employer never received.
Braddick settled out of court with Optimil but Taylor denied knowingly participating and forced a trial on the matter. In the end, Elwood found otherwise.
Optimil had alleged Taylor issued invoices and packing slips for parts Braddick had ordered. collected payments from Optimil and others, paid Braddick large sums of cash and kept a share for his own benefit, withdrawing the cash in regular increments of $9,500.
The scheme ran over the course of about 15 years. In December 2018, two Optimil employees alerted the president of their suspicions and by March 2019, company executives determined they had enough evidence to fire Braddick.
