Joe Magliocca, former Calgary city councillor, sentenced on fraud conviction

Former Calgary city councillor Joe Magliocca leaves court on May 22, 2025. (CTV News)

Former Calgary city councillor Joe Magliocca has been handed a six-month conditional sentence after being convicted of fraud under $5,000.

Magliocca was found guilty in January of submitting false expenses over the course of a year while he was the Ward 2 councillor.

His conditional sentence will include two months of house arrest, followed by months of a curfew. Magliocca was found not guilty of breach of trust.

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“It recognizes that what he did was wrong, but it also reflects upon everything he has done for his community. In the end, I think the result was a fair one,” said defence lawyer Peter Sankoff.

An RCMP investigation was launched in 2020 after concerns were raised about Magliocca’s expenses at the 2019 conference in Quebec in which the then-councillor claimed he was meeting with other elected officials on city business.

However, many of the people Magliocca claimed to have dined with said they hadn’t met with him.

“It was not an ‘oops mistake,’ it became a pattern,” said Justice Gord Wong Thursday in outlining the aggravating factors for sentencing.

Wong said mitigating factors included the fact that Magliocca had paid the city back the $3,900 for false expense claims and issued an apology.

The prosecution was seeking a jail term of up to six months, while the defence argued for the conditional sentence.

“A conditional sentence is harsher than people think,” Sankoff told CTV News. “Any official seeing what Mr. Magliocca has gone through would certainly think twice before doing this sort of thing.”

According to court documents, Magliocca made 19 separate fraudulent expense claims that included the names of 27 politicians from across the country.

His lawyer claims the incidents were the result of administrative and management errors. Magliocca is considering whether to appeal the conviction, his lawyer said.