Chief Who Stole TLE Money Handed Prison Sentence

Chief Who Stole TLE Money Handed Prison Sentence

Thursday, July 13, 2006 at 14:16

The disgraced former chief of the Saulteaux First Nation will be going to jail after all.

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal has overturned a lower court’s sentence of house arrest and community service for Gabe Gopher, and instead, has handed him a three-year prison sentence.

Gopher and two other former high-ranking band officials were convicted last fall for stealing $2.8 million from a treaty land entitlement trust fund in the late 1990s.

Earlier this year, the appeal court overturned the conditional sentences of the two other men convicted in the case — Mervin Night and Archie Moccasin — and sent them to jail.

(with files from The Canadian Press)