A CONVICTED fraudster has had her five-year sentence reduced to 12 months by the Court of Appeal.
Shukuanya Thompson was charged in February 2018 with multiple counts of falsification of accounts, possession of a forged document, uttering a false document, fraud by false pretences, conspiracy to commit fraud by false pretences and laundering the proceeds of criminal conduct.
In May of that year, she entered into a plea agreement with the prosecution. As a result of her guilty plea, a magistrate sentenced her to compensate the National Insurance Board in the amount of $179,557.06.
According to a ruling posted on the Court of Appeal’s website, Thompson was ordered to make a lump sum payment of $10,000 on or before February 1, 2019 and $1,000 per month thereafter.
If she defaulted on that payment, it would result in a custodial sentence of five years. She eventually defaulted on her payments and in August 2020 a warrant of apprehension was issued for her.
However, Thompson applied to the Court of Appeal for an extension of time to appeal her conviction and sentence.
On January 27, 2021 the court denied her application to appeal her conviction, but her application to appeal her sentence was allowed with the five-year sentence being quashed and the matter was sent back to the magistrate for resentencing.
On resentencing, the magistrate imposed again a sentence of five years, which Thompson again appealed on the ground that the punishment was “unduly severe”.
Court of Appeal Justices Sir Michael Barnett, Milton Evans and Carolita Bethell agreed with her argument and quashed her five-year sentence, substituting it with a period of 12 months instead, to run from the date of sentencing on February 5, 2021. “In our judgment the sentence of five years is much too harsh,” the justices noted. “Having regard to previous sentences for similar convictions under the Penal Code, it is difficult to understand how the magistrate applying his mind to principles of sentencing could have imposed a five-year sentence on the appellant.
“What the magistrate did was simply impose a five-year sentence. He did not indicate the basis of that decision. His ruling did not reflect that he addressed his mind to each count separately. No discussion about discount for guilty plea, the fact that the appellant had no antecedents, that there was a change of circumstances in the appellant since 2018 when the sentence of a compensation order was first imposed.
“As a matter of principle those sentences cannot be correct. Principles of sentencing require that although sentences must meet the individual circumstances that present themselves to a sentencing court, there should be parity as between persons who have been convicted of similar offences. This is not the case where the maximum penalty ought to be imposed, nor should the maximum penalty be the starting point.”
The justices also said the appellant will still be civilly liable for whatever loss her actions caused.
Thompson was convicted of defrauding the National Insurance Board (NIB) of $180,000 that was earmarked for the government’s housing initiative.
She is a former corporate services supervisor at HLB Galanis & Company.
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