Woman defrauded Lincoln Alexander, 33 others

Margaret Coulter was considered a caring and compassionate woman, which made the administrator’s theft of more than $1 million from elderly residents at Atrium Villa all the more shocking.

Coulter will spend her 60th birthday later this month at the Grand Valley Institution for Women after pleading guilty today to fraud over $5,000 and being sentenced to two years in prison.

Married 42 years to the same man and with two grown sons in successful careers, Coulter had a sterling reputation and no one at the Main Street East retirement building had any hint of the larceny and quiet desperation that lay just behind the registered nurse’s kindly eyes. 

“Margaret was like a old mother hen. She looked after people and she was caring and that makes her betrayal so much worse,” said Veronica Wuschenny, whose 87-year-old aunt, Rose Krushelnycky, was one of 37 residents — including Ontario’s former Lieutenant Governor Lincoln Alexander — cheated out of money by Coulter.