Former Kelowna social worker sentenced to five years in prison

A former Kelowna social worker accused of stealing money from children in provincial care has been sentenced to five years in prison.

BC Supreme Court Justice Steven Wilson handed down the sentence more than a year after Robert Riley Saunders pleaded guilty to fraud over $5,000 and also imposed shorter and concurrent terms for breach of trust and forgery.

Saunders misappropriated an estimated $460,000 dollars from the Ministry of Children and Family Development by opening joint accounts with 24 youths in his care, many of them Indigenous, and then taking their benefits.

The provincial government settled a class-action lawsuit with more than 100 people who said they were victims of Saunders in the scheme that was not discovered until his regular supervisor was on vacation in 2017.