Not one, but two convicted fraudsters running for city councillor in Richmond Hill, Ont.'s Ward 5

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The Ontario municipal Election Day is Monday, and there are so many interesting electoral storylines in various cities and towns across the province.

For example, will Halton District School Board trustees supporting shop teacher Busty Lemieux be ousted from office due to their ghastly wokeism?

In Brampton, will Sneaky Patrick Brown actually be reelected as mayor for a second term despite all the corruption, coverups, and cronyism that has made the “Flower City“ resemble Nicaragua North in recent years?

And speaking of corruption, that brings us to Richmond Hill, and specifically the delusional Ward 5 Councillor, Karen Cilevitz. Cilevitz, or “Syphillis” as Councillor Godwin Chan calls her, has a very chequered history. She received international media attention due to her unhinged voicemail to resident Steffi Goodfield, a stage 4 cancer survivor, a few years back. Steffi, you see, had the utter temerity to use the term “Ward 5” when promoting a music event… and apparently Karen thinks she owns the trademark to Ward 5. And she left Steffi an outrageous voicemail essentially saying so. (You won’t believe your ears…)

By the way, Cilevitz went on to sue a friend of Steffi’s, Matt Bergman, because he had hurt her feelings on social media. A decision was recently handed down in a court of law regarding that frivolous lawsuit, and par for the course, Cilevitz lost. She now has to pay Bergman’s legal fees. And that’s gonna be a stretch goal because Cilevitz is allegedly hard up for cash these days. That’s probably because she keeps getting fined for ethics code violations. Indeed, at one point, Cilevitz had been docked a whopping 315 days’ pay because of several successful complaints filed to the City of Richmond Hill’s integrity commissioner regarding her behaviour. That’s quite the penalty given there’s only 365 days in a year!

Even more recently, Cilevitz was convicted of fraud. Astute viewers might recall that we aired an exclusive interview with the person who had been hoodwinked by Cilevitz. That would be Patty Burton-Garcia. You see, Patty was hired by Cilevitz to work as a part-time assistant for the councillor beginning in the summer of 2019. Her salary was $25,000; Patty was paid approximately $900 every two weeks.

But starting from the day Patty received her first paycheque, things took a perverse twist. Namely, Cilevitz informed Patty that she and her boyfriend, Derek Christie, would be taking the lion’s share of Patty’s paycheque — typically about $800. Eventually, Cilevitz and Christie dinged Patty for some $21,000 – in other words, more than 80% of her actual earnings. I think this is known as extortion.

But things came to an ugly head around tax time the following year. Patty was informed by her accountant that because on paper she was earning that full salary, she owed the Canadian Revenue Agency about $4,000. She was stunned. And when Patty told Cilevitz about the impending tax hit, the councillor allegedly responded with three words: “Not my problem.”

Well, not only is Karen a fraudster, she’s also stupid. Because that response understandably turned an ally into an enemy as Patty reached out to law enforcement. Celivitz was found guilty of fraud under $5,000 and was forced to pay back the money to the City of Richmond Hill. So all of her chicanery was for nothing…

We did reach out to Karen Cilevitz to get her side of the story, even visiting her condominium, but she declined to comment. She won’t speak to Rebel News. She has all the time in the world for the tragically named Richmond Hill Liberal, though. Draw your own conclusions there..

And she’s all-over social media boo-hooing her plight. Check out this statement: “Over the past 4½ years I have been on the receiving end of ongoing hateful and hate-filled bullying enduring abusive and malicious treatment including cyber-bullying on Facebook.” Oh, there’s been bullying these past 4½ years all right. Case in point: the Steffi Goodfield incident and the failed lawsuit against Matt Bergman. Oh, and all those ethics code violations. She truly is the female version of Patrick Brown: break the rules and then play the victim card once you’re caught. Interestingly, a candidate running against Cilevitz in Ward 5 is Richard Rupp. He used to be a friend of Karen’s. Earlier this year, Cilevitz even nominated Rupp as the candidate to fill the then-vacant Ward 4 seat. But that was then and this is now, as allies have become adversaries.

It should be noted, however, that Mr. Rupp has something in common with Cilevitz. You see, he, too is a convicted fraudster. YorkRegion.com reports that between 1996 and 2001, he used accounts to file 652 false GST returns and receive fraudulent GST refunds totalling $217,557. He used names and social insurance numbers of other people to register some of the accounts, according to the CRA.

Rupp was sentenced to a conditional sentence of two years less a day for unlawfully making false or deceptive statements and willfully obtaining GST funds to which he was not entitled. Ouch…

Then again, maybe some people might think he is a hero for tipping off the taxman. Like that scene in Fun With Dick and Jane when this new age Bonnie and Clyde actually receive applause from bystanders when they rob the phone company.

Alas, it’s a moot point. Even if the target of the caper is a loathsome entity, be it theft or fraud, it’s still a crime. I did reach out to Mr. Rupp about his fraudulent past. And he seemed to take a page out of Karen’s playbook: namely, it was all a misunderstanding.

In any event, we have not one but two convicted fraudsters running for Ward 5 in Richmond Hill. Fascinating. It reminds me of the tagline from the 2004 film, Alien vs. Predator: “No matter who wins, we lose.”

But talk about trouble in paradise. The scuttlebutt is that Cilevitz allegedly said that she wasn’t running for re-election this year… and then registered to run on the last possible day. Her strategy, apparently, is that Rupp and the other nine candidates running for the Ward 5 seat will split the vote, allowing her to achieve victory. That’s why she threw Rupp under the bus… so much for the old saying, “honour among thieves.”

So it might just be that the white knight for Ward 5 is Tarun Saroya. He is not scandal-plagued. And he wears his politics on his shirt sleeves. Namely, he’s a conservative — the C-word even adorns his signage.

Come October 24, it will be fascinating to see how this riding swings. I’ll tell you one thing for sure: if an unethical bully/fraudster like Karen Cilevitz gets re-elected, my faith in democracy will be shattered. In fact, I might just have to embrace an opinion Justin Trudeau espouses. Namely, I might have to concur with Prime Minister Blackface McGroper that there is indeed much to admire about China’s basic dictatorship when it comes to, you know, getting things done…