John Bourne, a Whitehorse man who has faced more than a few criminal charges over the years, pulled one over on his lawyer, a Crown prosecutor and a territorial court judge the last time he was sentenced.

Yesterday, he paid the piper.

Bourne was before territorial court Judge John Faulkner to answer for entering a false document as evidence during a 2007 sentencing hearing.

In November 2006, the RCMP caught the 39-year-old man in a Dawson City hotel room with a bottle of 43 Tylenol No. 4 tablets.

The pain killers contain a significant amount of codeine and are illegal to have without a prescription.

At the time of the bust, Bourne told officers he didn't have a prescription, and he was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking.

But a couple of months later, the prescription appeared.

Bourne gave his lawyer at the time, Keith Parkkari, a script for 30 Tylenol No. 4 tablets in his name.

Parkkari sent the document to the Crown lawyer in charge of prosecuting Bourne. The charges against him were dropped to simple possession, which Bourne pleaded guilty to.

During the sentencing hearing, in April 2007, Bourne's lawyer told the judge his client had been suffering from a severe toothache and had bought 13 pills illegally, then got a prescription for the other 30.

Taking into account the evidence of the script, the Crown prosecutor conceded that the charges were not very severe and agreed that a fine of $400 was fair punishment.

But the officers who arrested Bourne in Dawson were suspicious.

Why hadn't Bourne produced the prescription, or at least mentioned it, when he was arrested?

They tried to contact the clinic where Bourne said he'd gotten the pills, but they got no immediate response.

In the meantime, Bourne was fined and went on his way. He was arrested again later in 2007, this time accused of drug trafficking and possession of an AK-47.

He was subsequently sentenced to 33 months in jail. After serving two-thirds of that sentence, he was out again, but not for long.

The RCMP had confirmed their suspicions: the prescription was a fake.

When faced with the charge, Bourne entered yet another guilty plea, this time to willful obstruction of justice.

In court on Monday, Bourne's lawyer, Gord Coffin, argued his client's crime was not as bad as lying on the witness stand but the judge disagreed.

"This is a very serious matter that strikes at the heart of the court process,” said Judge Faulkner, the same one who was taken in by Bourne's false evidence.

He said the crime was clearly premeditated and showed a troubling level of criminal sophistication.

Entering false evidence is worse that lying on the stand, he said, because judges often give significant weight to documents, whereas they might dismiss witness evidence as unbelievable.

Faulkner sentenced Bourne to 15 months is jail, 10 months of which were deemed served.