{"id":4149,"date":"2016-12-15T12:06:04","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T17:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=4149"},"modified":"2016-12-15T12:06:44","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T17:06:44","slug":"former-mars-director-allen-gelberg-charged-fraud-nearly-1m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2016\/12\/15\/former-mars-director-allen-gelberg-charged-fraud-nearly-1m\/","title":{"rendered":"Former MaRS director Allen Gelberg charged with fraud of nearly $1M"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former events director at Toronto\u2019s MaRS Discovery District<\/a>, regarded as \u201cone of the world\u2019s largest urban innovation hubs,\u201d has been arrested and charged in connection to an alleged fraud scheme of nearly $1 million.<\/p>\n

Toronto police say 61-year-old Allen Gelberg used his position as the Director of the Collaboration Centre at MaRS to defraud his employer, as well as service providers such as catering and equipment rental companies of over $970,000.<\/p>\n

A statement release by MaRS on Thursday confirms the accused was involved \u201cin apparent fraudulent activities\u201d and diverted funds for his \u201cpersonal use.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as external sources brought the improprieties to the attention of MaRS\u2019 senior management, MaRS took immediate and appropriate action to suspend the employee and initiate an investigation,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n

MaRS said a forensic investigation was launched to locate and identify the \u201cmisappropriated funds\u201d and a report was forwarded to police.<\/p>\n

Gelberg of Thornhill, Ont. was arrested on Wednesday and faces 11 charges including eight counts of fraud over $5,000, defraud the public over $5,000, possession of proceeds of crime and laundering proceeds of crime.\u00a0 He was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

According to Gelberg\u2019s LinkedIn page, he was employed at MaRS from 2005 to 2014. Officials at MaRS confirms he is no longer an employee.\u00a0 He is currently the executive director for Canadian Friends of Ariel University. The institution is based in Israel.\u00a0 An AboutMe webpage indicates Gelberg was a director of sales and marketing at Vintage Hotels based in the Niagara Region from 2000 to 2005.\u00a0 Toronto police say the accused is also the registered owner of the sole proprietorship known as Rediscover Niagara.<\/p>\n

Authorities are encouraging anyone in the catering, events or tourism industry who had contact or business with Gelberg to come forward.<\/p>\n

Source globalnews.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former events director at Toronto\u2019s MaRS Discovery District, regarded as \u201cone of the world\u2019s largest urban innovation hubs,\u201d has been arrested and charged in connection to an alleged fraud scheme of nearly $1 million. […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":4151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,1],"tags":[2342],"class_list":{"0":"post-4149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"category-news","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"tag-mars","11":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4153,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4149\/revisions\/4153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}