Toronto police officer convicted of stealing from dead people sentenced to 7 years in prison

Boris Borissov enters a Toronto courtroom in this undated image.

A Toronto police officer convicted of stealing from deceased individuals he was supposed to be investigating has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

The sentence was handed down in a Newmarket courtroom earlier this week and confirmed to CP24.com by a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

In May, Const. Boris Borissov was found guilty of 15 charges related to five incidents that occurred between 2020 and 2022. The charges included theft, fraud, breach of trust by an official, and obstruction of justice.

In one incident, a court heard that Borissov and another officer were called to the apartment of a man who was reported missing and later found to have died by suicide.

During that investigation, Borissov stole the man’s debit card, which was used by an associate at a Mississauga butcher shop the next day, the Crown said during the trial. The officer later attended the butcher shop and downloaded footage of the associate, submitting a false police report in an attempt to obstruct justice, the court heard.

The Crown also asserted that Borissov stole a TAG Heuer watch, valued at $6,500, from the missing man’s apartment and tried to sell it, an allegation the accused denied.

In another incident, the court heard, Borissov was investigating the death of a woman in May of 2020 when he stole her credit card and gave the information to an unknown individual who then used it to make fraudulent purchases.

Borissov, who was employed with the Toronto Police Service for 16 years, was arrested on April 11, 2022.

In her decision, Justice Mary Misener concluded that Borissov’s testimony at trial was “completely unworthy of belief” and wrote that the police officer’s story made “no sense” at least a dozen times.

“His evidence was riddled with lies, inconsistencies and evasions. I reject it. It does not raise a reasonable doubt as to his guilt,” she wrote in a written decision previously obtained by CTV News Toronto.

In August, while he was awaiting sentencing, Borissov was arrested by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal as he attempted to leave the country at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport.

Borissov is currently suspended without pay but in an email to CP24.com on Thursday, a spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service confirmed that they will now move to dismiss him through a formal police disciplinary process.

With files from CTV News Toronto’s Phil Tsekouras