A former ICBC employee charged with accessing the personal information of the Justice Institute attack victims made her first appearance in court on Wednesday.
Candy Rheaume, 44, is charged with unauthorized use of a computer by accessing names of the attack victims using ICBC’s computers. According to court documents, the date of the alleged offence was March 23, 2011.
Rheaume, who has no prior criminal record, made the appearance to consult legal counsel in New Westminster Law Courts. Her next court appearance is March 17.
Between April 2011 and January 2012, Langley resident Vincent Cheung, 43, waged a campaign of terror against 15 randomly selected people who were targeted in a series of attacks, which occurred all over Metro Vancouver.
The victims’ homes, vehicles, and property were the subject of shootings and fire bombings. The link among the victims was that Cheung saw their vehicles parked at the Justice Institute parking lot and he wrote down their licence plates.
During Cheung’s sentencing it was learned that he had become convinced that the JI was using satellite in space to track his movements and that is was zapping his brain.
Cheung, who had once won a million dollar home lottery, had become increasingly paranoid due to an intense drug habit that saw him spending $30,000 a month on heroin.
Cheung responded to the perceived threat by plotting and attacking people linked to the institute, a public safety education facility that trains police, fire and emergency medical responders.
It’s alleged Cheung acquired the vehicle owners’ names attached to the licence plates through his contact at ICBC.
Cheung was sentenced to 13 years and six months, less a year and a half for time served.
The “bizarre and malevolent” attacks on “entirely innocent people” were “laden with danger,” Vancouver B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen said at the time of sentencing.
Cheung had pleaded guilty to 18 counts related to the attacks.
Cheung associate Thurman Taffe, 56, pleaded guilty to one count of arson in connection with the attacks and was sentenced to time served and two years probation.