A Winnipeg judge reserved her decision Friday on sentencing a former city bureaucrat who said he turned to armed robbery to protect his family from menacing money lenders.

Klaus Burlakow, 49, who is credited with helping land the 1999 Pan Am Games for Winnipeg, tearfully apologized in court to his family and to the employees he terrified as he robbed six banks in Winnipeg and one in Vancouver.

He is believed to have stolen more than $32,000 in the crimes, carried out in 2002 and 2003. Some of that money has been recovered, but $25,000 is still outstanding.

Klaus Burlakow (file photo)
Klaus Burlakow (file photo)

In court Friday, Burlakow said he knew what he did was wrong, but claimed he was ordered to rob the banks to pay back money to mobsters who threatened his life.

"Certainly this was a situation where rather frightening and bizarre circumstances had gotten into my life," he told the judge.

"It was a situation I couldn't cope with, that was quite alien to me and in the end was quite terrifying for myself and for my family."

Burlakow said he got into financial trouble while trying to start an event-promotion business after taking early retirement from his $123,000-a-year job at Winnipeg's city hall.

When his Seattle business partner left with Burlakow's savings of $173,000, he said, he turned to some shady new backers.

They wanted him to smuggle drugs and launder money, he told the court – and they threatened the safety of his wife and two children unless he came up with some cash.

Burlakow could be sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for the seven bank robberies.

The Crown recommended he get between eight and 10 years. But his defence lawyer argued for just five to seven years, given that he's spent almost a year in jail since being arrested last February.