A Canadian doctor was defrauded of more than $160,000 after her colleague begged her for financial support with a false cancer diagnosis.
Dr. Meaghan Labine met Monica Kehar in 2018, when the duo were elected to serve on the national body representing the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
But things took a turn for the worse a year later, and by 2020 Labine was out six figures after Kehar asked her for money following her alleged cancer diagnosis.
But the diagnosis turned out to be a lie, and Kehar disappeared. When she resurfaced, she claimed she had been accepted into a residency program at the University of Calgary and moved to Alberta.
What followed were more requests for money to pay for her living expenses, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. “It seemed like no matter how much I borrowed, it was never enough,” Labine said CBC.
Monica Kehar is accused of defrauding a fellow doctor of more than $160,000 CAD after faking a cancer diagnosis and asking for money
Meaghan Labine says she has yet to be repaid despite winning a default judgment against Kehar in 2022. Kehar has a long history of lying, as evidenced by documents from the Board of Inquiry of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba.
Labine handed Kehar contracts that she signed and promised to pay her back, but the requests did not stop.
Labine told CBC that she continued to lend Kehar money “because she believed that if she didn’t help her complete medical school, she would never get her money back.”
Things came to a head when Kehar told Labine that she had received a job offer from a prominent doctor. However, when Labine confronted that doctor at a meeting, Kehar’s deception was revealed.
“I felt absolutely humiliated,” Labine told the publication. “How could I be so stupid to let myself be led like that?”
She would later learn that not only had Kehar lied about the illness and the job offer, but she had also not been accepted into a residency program in Calgary.
In fact, Kehar was kicked out of her medical program after a series of violations that culminated in fabricating a serious medical condition.
On November 13, 2020, the Board of Inquiry of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba convicted Kehar “in expression of disapproval of her conduct.”
Kehar registered with the College and enrolled as a first-year family medicine resident at the University of Manitoba in February 2019, according to documents reviewed by DailyMail.com.
Kehar was kicked out of a program in Manitoba after a series of offenses that culminated in altering documents and fabricating a serious medical condition.
However, she began participating in an elective in Saskatchewan without the proper permit. Kehar would later claim that this mistake was “unintentional.”
After being alerted to the problem, Kehar immediately stopped practicing and changed an email she received from the College before forwarding it to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan.
“This was a clear attempt by Ms. Kehar to remedy the situation and shift responsibility for this error from herself to the college,” the document said.
The College discovered the change on February 14, 2019 and reported to the University of Manitoba the same day.
The finding prompted both the board and the university to conduct months of investigation into Kehar’s behavior.
She denied altering the email but was placed on paid leave pending further review.
Kehar later contacted administrators, claiming that “she received an email from another individual who admitted to hacking her account and altering the email dated February 13, 2019.”
Around March 13, Kehar was allowed to return to her residential duties, and about two days later the university provided her with a report showing that there was no evidence to support the hacking claims.
The Board later heard that Kehar had defrauded ‘substantial sums of money’ from two medical colleagues after lying about the state of her health ‘to gain sympathy and support’.
Kehar ultimately took responsibility for changing the document, blaming it on “a brief period of mental exhaustion.” She claimed the decision stemmed from “fear, stress, exhaustion and nervousness.”
Also in 2019, Kehar had her French bulldog, Django, registered as an “emotional support dog” for “stress-related” reasons in Alberta, according to documents reviewed by DailyMail.com.
She later admitted to editing the offending email and was expelled from the University of Manitoba’s Family Medicine Program on May 7.
“Her expulsion was based on her admission that she had altered the email in question, and on the faculty’s finding that Ms. Kehar had been dishonest with respect to certain other academic events, which she denied,” the document said.
Just weeks later, Kehar appealed her expulsion to the university’s Local Discipline Committee.
In the appeal, she described concerns that she may have a serious health condition…and that she underwent surgery in January 2019 to address the problem.”
The document quotes her as saying: ‘Although I do not feel comfortable discussing this matter, I now understand that it is relevant to this matter and has had an impact on me and my actions during this time.’
On May 28, seven days after filing the appeal, Kehar was interviewed by the College Investigator. She described being “going through a very difficult time” that began in late 2018 and “feeling extremely stressed at the time.”
Kehar also insisted that she had undergone surgery on January 8, but was unable to provide documentation.
Kehar’s deportation appeal was heard and rejected in June, but she filed another complaint in July.
In August, Kehar presented the College with a letter, purportedly written by the office manager of her surgeon’s clinic, as proof of the aforementioned surgical procedure.
Her lawyers claimed there was no documentation from the hospital because Kehar “didn’t stay overnight.”
Subsequent investigation by the College found that there was no evidence to support her claim of a diagnosis, nor the claim that she had undergone surgery at the hospital she mentioned.
Furthermore, investigation revealed that the letter she provided had been written much earlier and was about a different issue, but Kehar had changed it.
The surgeon she identified confirmed to the College that the only procedures he ever performed on Kehar were in October 2017 and February 2018, and neither was related to the alleged “serious medical condition.”
The second appeal against her deportation was heard on January 24, 2020 and rejected five days later.
The Board later learned that Kehar had lied to two colleagues about her personal circumstances, including her health, ‘to gain sympathy and support’.
Those colleagues lent Kehar “significant sums of money on multiple occasions” in response to her requests for assistance, the document said.
Kehar “acknowledged that her conduct was a serious mistake and afterwards expressed remorse for her actions,” and “acknowledged that she has demonstrated an unfitness to practice.” Her deportation was confirmed.
Despite obtaining a default judgment against Kehar in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2022, Labine has yet to be reimbursed for the tens of thousands she lost.
She recently filed a lawsuit in British Columbia in an attempt to get her hands on the money.
Kehar has promised to pay her back, but Labine has doubts. “When she asks for details or when she meets with my lawyer, she doesn’t give anything,” she told CBC.