Former call girl convicted in fraud gets 4 years
A former call girl who defrauded a disabled software engineer from Ottawa out of $850,000 and then faked her own death was sentenced on Friday to four years in prison.
Darquise Johnson — who also goes by the name Darquise L'Ecuyer — was convicted in January of five fraud-related offences.
Crown prosecutors were seeking a sentence of five to seven years for Johnson, 31, for what they described as her cruel treatment of Douglas Macklem, a computer software analyst who has spent most of his life in a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy.
Johnson's lawyers had argued in court that her husband, who lives in Jamaica, had forced her into the scheme.
Macklem said in a victim impact statement at a sentencing hearing earlier this month that he "may never trust another woman" after Johnson duped him out of his life savings.
He left the courtoom Friday relieved by the sentencing.
"As the victim, you would like to see a longer sentence, of course," Macklem said. "But it certainly was a fair and just decision."
The court had heard that Macklem first hired Johnson as a call girl but then began a conventional relationship.
He spent his inheritance, RRSPs and mortgaged his family home to pay for fictitious vacation properties Johnson convinced him to invest in, with the promise the two would then live together in the Caribbean.
In 2006 Macklem received an email saying Johnson had died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic.
Macklem later began investigating his investments and realized he had been duped. Johnson was arrested in 2007 when she returned to Canada.
While Judge John Johnston said there was nothing to indicate Johnson was motived by anything other than greed, her lawyer, Bruce Engel, said she was remorseful.
"I think she expressed [remorse] to the best of her capabilities, which are very limited, given her personality disorder," Engel said.
Johnson will have to serve at least a year of her sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
