TORONTO

A former long-time LCBO employee admitted Monday he ripped off his employer for up to $2.7 million in cash and booze over a dozen years.

Francois Agostini, 59, was the only full-time employee in the LCBO’s diplomatic sales program in Toronto, which co-ordinated the sale of tax-free and duty-free liquor — a 40% discount — to foreign diplomats and consular officials, Crown attorney Grace David said.

He had exclusive control of the operation, David said while reading an agreed statement of fact to Justice Beverly Brown.

But Agostini started cheating the LCBO on Nov. 12, 1998, and continued to do so until Dec. 29, 2011. He exploited the agency’s honour system where he recorded payment for diplomatic clients’ alcohol in handwritten sales ledgers to perpetrate the criminal marathon.

He took the payments and forwarded the sales proceeds to the corporate accounting office in downtown Toronto, according to the Crown.

The LCBO’s losses ranged from nearly $2.2 million to more than $2.7 million — plus the provincial Crown corporation had to pay $134,787 in taxes on Agostini’s fraudulent transactions and another $3,679 in excise duties, David said.

Agostini took alcohol for his own and his family and friends’ use and didn’t follow LCBO’s process “so that he could deliberately hide from his employer the fact that he was getting alcohol and cash for his own purposes,” the Crown said.

Court heard Agostini’s deceptive methods included:

He took payment or partial payment for booze and failing to record the sales or keeping the cash.

He generated false requests for non-existent diplomats and then arranged for the products to be consumed by friends and family — without any paying the LCBO.

Agostini accepted payment from legitimate diplomats and stamped invoices as “paid.” Then, he changed the records, altered the proceeds by deleting product or lowering the cost of the order. He would reprint the invoice with a lowered amount and pocket the difference.

He would also delete invoice and corporate records after the product had been shipped to the Toronto warehouse.

His fraud was uncovered due to an anonymous tip that was called into the LCBO on Sept. 26, 2011, David said.

Hired in 1981, Agostini was fired from his $54,778-a-year job on Jan. 27, 2012. He will be sentenced Jan. 29.

The LCBO launched a civil lawsuit against Agostini, accusing him of orchestrating the scam involving his sister Monique McNeil and a friend, Andrea Smallwood, who allegedly posed as a Ukrainian foreign diplomat. The lawsuit claims they sold more than 1,000 of cases of vodka, rye and rum.

No one except Agostini faced criminal charges.

The liquor board’s statement of claim alleged Agostini bilked the LCBO out of $1.6 million in cash and products between April 2005 and December 2011.

The lawsuit, which is also seeking $500,000 in punitive damages and legal and investigative costs, hasn’t yet been settled.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

The following is from the agreed statement of fact read out in a courtroom on Monday: