Sudbury Star article piqued ministry's interest

April 10, 2015

When Marjorie Sirvage was convicted of extorting an elderly Sudbury man in 2012, the Ministry of Community and Social Services paid attention when the Sudbury Star published a story about her case.

That's because Sirvage, now 47, was on welfare and she hadn't declared the money she got from the victim as income.

The Star's story in August 2012 detailed how the man paid Sirvage, a prostitute, $3,000 for her services.

The man, who was in his late 80s, also gave her $87,000 in assistance and loans to help with fake medical crises and trips.

She later extorted another $10,000 from the man, leaving him broke.

Sirvage, who had pleaded guilty to extortion, received a two-year conditional sentence.

The ministry then pressed Sirvage for details about her income, specifically her bank statements over a five-year period, because Sirvage had been receiving Ontario Works assistance since July 1991, and Ontario Disability Support Program assistance since December 1991.

When three months of statements from August 2012 were submitted, officials found Sirvage was making monthly bank deposits of $5,000.

Further statements were requested by the ministry dating back to 2010. The ministry eventually concluded there had been an overpayment of $39,705.47 to Sirvage.

As a result, this week she was convicted of fraud over $5,000 for not reporting income she received while receiving welfare.

Sirvage, now living in Sturgeon Falls, was not sentenced because her lawyer, Alex Toffoli, asked for a pre-sentence report.

A sentencing date will be set April 15

Toffoli said that at the time of the overpayment, Sirvage was dealing with mental health issues, including clinical depression.

On Aug. 16, 2012, Superior Court Justice Patricia Hennessy sentenced Sirvage to a two-year conditional sentence for extortion, which included house arrest in the first year and a curfew in the second.

Sirvage was also put on three years' probation, which included the condition no male is allowed in her apartment without prior approval of her probation officer.

Hennessy also issued a restitution order for $9,000, with a minimum $20 to be repaid monthly to the victim (Sirvage had already provided $1,000)

A tearful Sirvage pleaded with Hennessy not to send her to jail.

"If I'm in jail, how am I supposed to make money to pay (the victim) back. How can I get better? I'm tired of being unhappy. I just want to be happy. I don't know what it's like to be happy. But, I am sorry for what I did."

Defence lawyer John Saftic told the court Sirvage, who was physically, mentally and sexually abused as a child, and was raped two decades ago, is the mother of five children. However, the Children's Aid Society took at the children, including two at birth.

Sirvage suffers from a range of mental illnesses including agoraphobia, panic attacks, personality disorder, anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia.

Saftic said the relationship between Sirvage and the elderly man began about four years earlier when he replied to an escort service advertisement and began using her services once a month.

After 30 months, it had evolved into a friendship, with the man providing money as gifts and loans. The extortion period came last and ended with the man going to police.

Assistant Crown attorney Philip Zylberberg said what Sirvage did was tantamount to elder abuse - taking advantage of a vulnerable, old man who wanted intimacy and fleecing him of his $100,000 in life savings.

"You can't be blackmailed if you don't have a guilty secret," he told the court. "(And) blackmail is more lucrative than prostitution. It is here. The price of being silenced was greater than the price of sexual services."

The elderly man, 92 in 2012, was so financially ruined by Sirvage, said Zylberberg, he could not afford to do repairs to the home he had built, get a broken television fixed or have his late wife's headstone engraved.