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A former DND employee and Canadian Forces soldier whose $400-a-day cocaine addiction led to the theft of nearly $1 million in computer parts from the federal government was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison Friday.

And if 33-year-old Andrew Heggaton doesn’t pay back the $966,933.82 the Intel core processors, hard drives, motherboards, and graphics cards were worth within the next eight years, he could be sentenced to another three years of prison time.

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Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey said the fraud had a “significant impact” on the Canadian Forces Crypto Support Unit where Heggaton once worked, leaving its IT network on the verge of collapsing and seriously affecting the unit’s capacity to function.

“This is not a victimless crime,” Perkins-McVey told Heggaton during the sentencing. “This is the type of offence that erodes the public trust.”

Heggaton pleaded guilty to fraud, trafficking in property obtained by crime and breach of trust by a public officer after stealing the computer parts over a four-year period between 2011 and March 2015. Some of the computer parts were sold by Heggaton on the Internet classified site Kijiji.