CANADA COURIER: The scam that created a dent in Winnipeg's community (01/11/98)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

The scam that created a dent in Winnipeg's community

For many years, Joanne Lewandosky was known in Winnipeg's Ukrainian Canadian community as a go-getter who got things done. She was an active organizer of the "Kiev" pavilion in the city's annual summer multicultural festival, Folklorama, and became the point person for virtually every Ukrainian-related event or activity taking place in her community.

Today, Ms. Lewandosky might be lucky to get into events, let alone coordinate them.

In August 1997, the 51-year-old Winnipeg woman was found guilty of 18 counts of violations of the Securities Act and was sentenced to six months in jail for leading a nearly decade-long scamming exercise that cost her friends and acquaintances more than $900,000 (or about $650,000 U.S.). Ms. Lewandosky was supposed to invest these people's money, some of it obtained from homes being mortgaged. Instead, Winnipeg Judge Richard Chartier said that Ms. Lewandosky was "borrowing from Peter to Paul" - with the idea that one day she would repay her unwitting creditors.

That day never happened. Faced with overcoming her own mounting debt, Ms. Lewandosky was borrowing from people to pay back monies received from others.

"She then began borrowing from others to pay the initial investors," said Judge Chartier. "At some date, she knew that she could no longer expect to repay these individuals ... and she became more aggressive and more evasive."

Ms. Lewandosky cried during the judge's description of her actions and when she was escorted from the court room.

Ms. Lewandosky's friend Diana Grabinski told The Winnipeg Free Press that Ms. Lewandosky's actions "were unintentional," and that "she has done good service to the community. It just got out of control."

I know Joanne Lewandosky and heard rumors of her alleged financial improprieties some time ago. In fact, I called her, on behalf of this newspaper, to get her response.

In her fast-talking way, she denied any wrongdoing as vicious gossip leveled against her. Her husband, Henry Kuzia, pleaded with me to leave Joanne, who is in remission from Hodgkin's disease, alone. I respected the request and left well enough alone.

But now a court has set the record straight.

It's true that Ms. Lewandosky has done good work for the Ukrainian Canadian community in Winnipeg and continues to do so as a volunteer for the Holy Family Nursing Home run by the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate in the city. However, good deeds in one area don't erase bad ones elsewhere. What's left is a bad taste all around, which is what seems to have happened in Winnipeg's Ukrainian community.

A once active and very visible member of the local scene has become anathema. One-time close associates of Ms. Lewandosky, such as Martha Banias, who purchased Bon Voyage Travel in Winnipeg from Ms. Lewandosky and her husband almost three years ago, are reluctant to speak about her. That's sad, because few people I recall when I lived in Winnipeg seemed to be as committed as Ms. Lewandosky was to Ukrainian Canadiana. Sadder still when one considers that Ms. Lewandosky is also burdened with a difficult medical condition.

Ms. Grabinski said her friend did not deserve her fate. Unfortunately, Ms. Lewandosky was its master. Certainly, her victims did not deserve their fate of lies and broken promises.

Only Ms. Lewandosky will be able to explain whether the tears she shed in that Winnipeg courtroom were for these people or for herself. It's too bad she didn't cry out earlier for the help she obviously needed. Rather than asking people for money, she could have asked them for something that never has to be re-paid: human kindness.

Everyone in Winnipeg's Ukrainian community would have been richer for it.