MANDEL: Suspended Toronto cop finally going to prison for stealing recluse's estate
· Toronto Sun
The crooked cop and his ex-lover are finally heading to prison .
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Suspended Toronto Police Const. Robert Konashewych and former mistress Adellene Balgobin have lost an appeal of their 2023 conviction for fabricating a will and defrauding a vulnerable man’s estate of $834,000. Until now, the disgraced 52 Division cop had been suspended without pay and free on bail.
With the help of his devious lover, a senior client representative with the Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee office, Konashewych presented himself as the sole heir of Heinz Sommerfeld, a reclusive senior with Alzheimer’s disease who died in 2017 while under Balgobin’s financial care.
The elaborate scheme only unravelled after the officer’s suspicious ex-girlfriend mistakenly opened a piece of mail addressed to the “Estate of Heinz Siegfried Sommerfeld c/o Robert Konashewych.” Her lawyer investigated and soon she was reporting Konashewych to police in 2019.
Stiff sentence for convicted couple
For a white-collar crime, Superior Court Justice Sean Dunphy took the unusual step of throwing the book at the couple, sentencing them to a stiff seven years in prison — Balgobin also received a concurrent five-year term for breach of trust by a public officer — which they had managed to evade until now.
Ontario’s highest court found the trial judge made no errors in admitting evidence, his instructions to the jury weren’t unbalanced and they upheld the sentence even though it was outside the usual three to five years for such crimes. The pair had urged the appeal court to substitute house arrest or a prison term of no more than three years.
“It cannot reasonably be disputed that Mr. Konashewych traded on his status as a police officer and the ‘high regard’ in which he was held in committing this fraud,” wrote Justice Jonathon George on behalf of the three-judge panel.
“It was the many severe aggravating factors in this case and the corrosive impact of the fraud on public trust in the police and the OPGT that drove the trial judge’s decision to impose an ‘exemplary’ sentence.”
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Judge: Only motive was ‘greed’
Court heard the rightful heir, Sommerfeld’s half-brother Peter Stelter, could have used the inheritance to save his Haliburton home and his Florida condo after he lost his job. Sommerfeld had become reclusive and cut off contact with Stelter, so his brother didn’t know he’d been moved to a long-term care home with advancing dementia or that the OPGT had taken over his affairs in 2008.
As his senior client representative, Balgobin knew there was no will found when the government agency sold Sommerfeld’s Mississauga home.
The old man’s death in June 2017 presented a perfect opportunity for the couple.
Balgobin and Konashewych had been having an affair since 2014 and despite his promises, her beau still hadn’t left the glamourous Candice Dixon . A windfall of cash would help make that happen. And as for Konashewych , Dunphy said, “ the only motive that can be ascribed to his actions is greed. ”
‘Trouble erupted’ after split with ex
Balgobin accessed documents with Sommerfeld’s signature. Konashewych drew up a fake will with fake witnesses and backdated it to 2006, claiming he was 22 and working security at Woodbine Racetrack when he met and befriended the 66-year-old loner who he claimed appointed him executor and left him his entire estate.
Konashewych notified the OPGT of the will. Stelter was located, but his lawyer told him the will appeared valid.
When it came time to apply for probate, the cop signed an affidavit falsely claiming he’d searched police databases without locating either of the two witnesses to the will. Balgobin wrote an affidavit as a “disinterested party” verifying Sommerfeld’s signature.
They almost got away with it.
“ In October 2017, trouble erupted, ” the trial judge said. “ Through a series of unlikely coincidences that even a pulp novelist might have blushed to concoct, news of the relationship between Mr. Konashewych and Ms. Balgobin made its way to the ears of Miss Candice Dixon. ”
When Konashewych collected his ill-gotten gains and left Dixon, he made the biggest mistake of his life. He forgot to forward his mail.