The woman who stole close to $90,000 from the Westlock Sobeys has been sentenced to seven months in jail before she is deported to the Philippines.
Christine Tan was sentenced on Sept. 3 in Westlock Provincial Court, about six months after she pleaded guilty to one count of theft over $5,000 on March 5.
Judge Karl Wilberg said he had originally been looking at a sentence of 12-18 months, considering the amount of money Tan stole. However, he took into account several mitigating factors and eventually reduced the sentence to only seven months.
In addition, Tan will also be deported to her native country, as she was in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program — a criminal conviction results in deportation, Crown prosecutor Jeff Morrison said.
Morrison didn’t mince words when he presented the facts of the case to the court and argued for what he felt was an appropriate sentence.
He said Tan had stolen close to $90,000 from the Sobeys over the span of several months by way of falsified documents such as returns forms.
Of that amount, the store was able to recover approximately $23,000, leaving $69,556.34 still outstanding. Tan was given a position of trust, and subsequently abused it, he said.
“Canada gave her a home and she stole from us,” Morrison said.
He explained sentencing in the Canadian system is based on denunciation, deterrence and rehabilitation. However, in Tan’s case, the sentence should be designed to denounce her actions and deter others from doing the same thing, as there’s no point in rehabilitating her since she will be deported once her jail term is over.
“She needs jail and after that she needs to go away,” he said, adding it’s a “sad state of affairs” that she came here under the auspices of the TFWP and then started a “life of crime” once she got here.
Morrison added he was requesting a restitution order, “for what it’s worth,” conceding the remaining $70,000 might not ever be recovered.
He also said Tan had no prior criminal record, either in Canada or anywhere else.
Defence lawyer Gary Smith acknowledged Tan would have to spend time in jail and then would be deported, and sought to reduce the amount of time she would spend behind bars.
He explained Tan’s guilty plea should be considered a mitigating factor because she entered it knowing the repercussions she faced.
Smith also raised concerns with how Sobeys’ owner Tom Vesely took Tan to her home and demanded she give him back the money she took.
Vesely was in the courtroom and rose to clarify what had happened when he recovered some of the money Tan took. He said when Tan was interviewed, she admitted what she did and voluntarily gave back the money.
He added the $23,000 included vacation pay owed to Tan.
Vesely also said the biggest impact of this whole situation is that he put his trust in Tan and was helping her immigrate, and then she “stabbed me in the back.”
Smith also talked about how when Tan was arrested she was escorted out the door with all the store’s Filipino employees watching, an experience that was “humiliating for her.”
Morrison countered that while it must have been humiliating for Tan to be escorted out of the store in that manner, “she’s the author of that” thanks to her actions.
In devising and handing down his sentence, Wilberg said Tan’s actions not only represented a breach of a very important relationship, it also hurt the TFW community as well.
Then there was no apparent reason for her crime — was it greed or a serious need for money at home or a mental issue? There is no indication the reason, he said.
Wilberg said he was initially looking at a 12-18-month jail sentence, but factoring in the fact only $70,000 remains unaccounted for and not the entire $90,000, the theft was not as severe.
In addition, he considered the fact Tan had volunteered for almost 180 hours at the library and local churches while awaiting her fate.
Taking those facts into account, he opted to reduce the sentence to only seven months.
