A Pelican Lake First Nation woman’s fight against extradition to the United States to stand trial has been dismissed by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.

Julliette Belle Carter is facing charges for wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Its alleged that Carter and other co-conspirators engaged in a telephone fraud scheme, targeting United States victims, between February of 2014 and November of 2017.

“Victims of the scheme indicated that callers impersonated United States Internal Revenue Service officials seeking to collect fictitious back taxes, penalties and fines,” the Court of Appeals ruling stated. “The callers directed the victims to send wire transfers through Western Union, MoneyGram, or by using other payment methods. The callers often threatened the victims with prosecution or arrest if they did not comply with the requests.”

The allegation said that at least 241 victims lost $633,000 USD.

“Between July 15, 2015, and August 28, 2015, Ms. Carter attended at Western Union and MoneyGram locations throughout the United States and collected a total of $412,523.49 USD from approximately 138 individual victims of the fraud scheme via 202 wire transfers. Ms. Carter used her Canadian passport as identification to pick up approximately 119 of the wire transfers,” said the ruling.

In March 2019, Carter was arrested and committed to being extradited. In September, the federal Justice Minister ordered a Gladue report, summarizing Carter’s background.

She launched a Charter of Rights challenge in that her Indigenous ancestry would not be taken into consideration by a U.S. court on how severe her prison sentence might be if convicted. She alleged that the extradition would be unjust and oppressive.

However, the Appeals Court was unanimous, ruling that Cater did not establish that the Attorney General’s decision to order her surrender was unreasonable.

The court noted that if Carter is convicted in the U.S., she could be sentenced to 3-5 years. While a Canadian court conviction could bring of a sentence of 3-6 years.