Jersey Unreported Judgments

ROYAL COURT

(Samedi Division)

7 May 1999

Before: FC Hamon Esq Deputy Bailiff and

Jurats Myles and Quérée

AG

-v-

Tarnya Marie Dickison

261 counts of obtaining money by false pretences (counts 1-261, inclusive)

(Total: £38,667.70 from three local banks).

Age: 29

Plea: Guilty

Details of Offences:

Cheque frauds over four weeks. Opened accounts and wrote cheques without the funds to support them. Deliberate, premeditated. No monies recovered.

Details of Mitigation:

Had become pregnant since charged - not considered mitigation. One minor previous conviction. Co-operative. Dominated by boyfriend who ‘put her up’ to committing the offences and received all the benefit. Claimed received no financial benefit herself.

Conclusions: 2 years imprisonment on each count, concurrent.

Sentence and Observations of the Court: 2 years Probation with 240 hours community service.

Decided not to proceed by way of Newton hearing to establish who benefited from the funds. Had therefore to accept her version. Due to unusual circumstances cannot say a custodial sentence is inevitable.

Miss S Fitz, Crown Advocate

Advocate Mrs S A Pearmain for the accused

JUDGMENT

THE DEPUTY BAILIFF: Miss Dickison has pleaded guilty to 261 counts of obtaining money by false pretences or cheque frauds, most of this over a period of just four weeks. She cashed Eurocheques whilst in Germany, as well as sterling cheques given to her by the bank and has defrauded three banks of a total sum of £38,667.70. No money has been recovered and this is a very large sum.

What Mrs Pearmain has told us is that she was entirely manipulated by her then partner, a man called Jonathon Orwell. Her version is that she went with him to Germany for a holiday. During that holiday she must have made some 150 withdrawals from banks during the five days she was there. She says that she handed all the money to Orwell, who put it in a suitcase and lodged it somewhere quite unbeknown to her. She has accepted her guilt, but her argument which was put to us by Mrs Pearmain this morning is that she is as much duped as the banks were.

Miss Fitz put it to us very clearly when she says that these offences were deliberate. That, she says, is evidenced by the fact that in September 1997, the defendant paid a Eurocheque drawn on her credit Swiss account into her NatWest account. She was advised that it would take up to a month to clear this amount, as any cheque over £700 has to go through the clearing system. So that when in July 1998, she credited her accounts with the sum of £2,790 and £2,780, these sums were made up of Eurocheques each of which did not individually exceed the sum of £700 which of course cleared immediately enabling her to draw out the funds.

Miss Fitz argues that Miss Dickison was aware that only three Eurocheques for less than £700 could be cashed at any one time and when in Hamburg she consistently cashed only three cheques at each branch bank she visited, all in the sum of DM 400.

The Crown repeated to us this morning that they are moving their conclusions on an acceptance of her version. There has been no proof obtained that she has derived any financial benefit. Her former partner, Jonathon Orwell, is allegedly some kind of accountant but neither certified nor chartered and Miss Dickison has no financial training. She is 29 years of age and has become pregnant whilst on remand with her new partner. We have to say immediately that we do not regard her pregnancy in those circumstances as a mitigating factor.

This was a most serious fraud - not only because of the amount involved - and in the case of AG -v- Hamon (22 May 1998) Jersey Unreported the Court said that: "cheque and credit card frauds, by and large, attract custodial sentences, and the range, I have to say is between six months and eighteen months, but each case must turn on its facts."

We have to say that on the version before us - and we thought about a Newton hearing but decided against that course - we are not convinced that these particular and personal circumstances lead us to what would normally be a totally inevitable conclusion. There is much more, in our view, that still needs to be investigated.

Stand up, please, Miss Dickison. We are going to sentence you to two years’ probation, with 240 hours’ community service.

Authorities

Whelan: Aspects of Sentencing in the Superior Courts of Jersey: p53

AG -v- Pemberton (14 June 1991) Jersey Unreported

AG -v- Newland (21 February 1992) Jersey Unreported

AG -v- Jeune (4 August 1993) Jersey Unreported

AG -v- Godfrey (3 October 1997) Jersey Unreported

AG -v- Hamon (22 May 1998) Jersey Unreported [1998.104]