Mark Ellis, Author at Canadian Fraud Law

Tangled Weeds: Fiduciary Status in a Criminal Fraud Not Determinative in Employment Litigation?

By Mark Ellis

Surprisingly, evidently not. Briefly the facts in Plate v. Atlas Copco Canada Inc., 2019 ONCA 196: an Executive in the role of Vice President Global Strategic Customers was terminated for just cause grounded in a decades-long defrauding of the company and its benefits provider in conspiracy with the latter’s consultant, to the extent of over $20,000,000, over a million of which resulted to the Executive personally. His argument that he was a bystander incidentally enriched to the knowledge of the employer failed, conviction entered, no appeal pursued.

Jagged Little Pill: What “You Oughta Know” Regarding Agency Fraud

By Mark Ellis

Recently Canadian singer Alanis Morissette became the latest well-publicized victim of fraud at the hands of one she employed and trusted: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/36316327. She joins a long list of celebrities who have suffered fraud at the hands of those employed to trust, amongst them the Beatles, Beyoncé, David Bowie, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Elvis, the Rolling Stones.

Anti-fraud monitoring: The employer’s right of surveillance

By Mark Ellis

Employee surveillance is an excellent and available method by which companies can protect against fraud. Monitoring of company-supplied hardware, software and access is perfectly legal and arguably compelling in Canada. Many still act under the mistaken belief that when it comes to personal communications such as e-mail and social media forums such as Facebook and Twitter, anything intended as private and personal is protected.

In truth, such privacy is very limited. The legal rubric underlying such an assumption is “reasonable expectation of privacy”, an expression borrowed for global adaptation from the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, and protected in the Canadian Charter. Historically, personal communications and the privacy protections afforded them were sacrosanct. In addition to the medium of ‘snail mail’ being confidential in its own right—the sealed envelope—most jurisdictions honoured the British-based “Royal Mail Rule” premised upon the opening of personal mail as verboten.