A former City of Barrie manager is facing fraud charges after allegations he and a local contractor defrauded the city through overbilling of contract jobs at city facilities.

Police say they started their investigation on June 2 after a request from the city.

After conducting their investigation, Barrie police say the city’s former manager of corporate facilities allegedly assisted a local contractor with getting substantial work outside of existing contracts for maintenance at numerous city buildings.

The contractor would submit the invoices to the city manager which were inflated and in some cases duplicated in order to disguise excessive totals, police say.

Police say after the contractor got his money from the City of Barrie, he would then give the city manager secret commissions in return. Over the course of four years, police say $3 million was paid to the contractor – $2 million of which is alleged to have been obtained through fraud.

Police have charged the city’s former manager of corporate services, 38-year-old Ryan Thompson of Clearview Township, and the contractor Travis Wilkes-Graham, 30, of Innisfil.

Both are jointly charged with fraud over $5,000, conspiracy to commit indictable offences, secret commissions and possession of proceeds of crime over $5,000.

"The Corporation of the City of Barrie takes these allegations extremely seriously. The City acted as soon as we were made aware of concerns about potentially inappropriate vendor relations. The City retained a forensic auditor (Deloitte) to review the situation. Once their initial review was complete, the City immediately turned the findings over to the Barrie Police to investigate," said  City of Barrie Chief Administrative Officer Carla Ladd in a release. "The employee is no longer with the City and all contracts with this contractor have been terminated. Deloitte was subsequently requested to conduct a further expanded audit of the area in question to ensure there was no other related activity and this appears to be an isolated incident. This is a serious situation and the City is cooperating fully with the Police."

Both were released and will back in court on Dec. 7.