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A Saskatoon chef came to court with thousands of dollars in cash to start paying back the money he defrauded from a local business.

Amedeo Vallati, the former manager and chef at La Bottega restaurant, pleaded guilty Thursday to committing fraud by writing $7,676.97 in bad cheques to Real Canadian Wholesale to purportedly buy supplies for the restaurant.

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He paid back more than half of it on Thursday, bringing $4,145 with him in cash, his lawyer said, because the court won’t take personal cheques for restitution payments. A condition of his sentence is that he’ll continue paying $500 a month until he has returned what he took.

Crown prosecutor Robin Ritter described how Vallati created a holding company in late 2013, then opened a business account at a bank. In January and February 2014, Vallati wrote seven worthless cheques to Real Canadian Wholesale “to cover purchases which were ordinarily made for the restaurant” as well as multiple gift cards, which were out of the ordinary.