Jersey Unreported Judgments

[2010]JRC064

ROYAL COURT

(Samedi Division)

26^th March 2010

The Attorney General

-v-

Carl Vernon Shore

(also known as Karl Vernon Shaw)

Sentencing by the Inferior Number of the Royal Court, following guilty pleas to the following charges:

First Indictment

Second Indictment

Age:  45.

Plea: Guilty.

Details of Offence:

First Indictment

Shore was employed as a contracts manager at Style Windows.  As part of his duties he was responsible for procuring the materials and labour for contracts, and would manage the whole process from the arrival of materials up to and including any aftercare service.  He defrauded his employer by deceiving them into entering into a contract with a company called Jager for work at the new airport control tower.  The job price was approximately £18,300.  In fact he arranged for the payments to go directly into his own account, and employed a second company (Alufix) to do the work for approximately £14,000.

The fraud was discovered when Alufix, who had undertaken a second contract for Style, contacted Style asking for payment for the first job at the airport.  Style informed them that the work had been carried out by Jager and that the invoices had been paid. 

Style investigated and discovered that the insurance liability documents for Jager and Alufix were virtually identical.  They contacted the insurance company who confirmed that whilst Alufix was insured with them, Jager was not.  The commercial manager at Style therefore accessed the computer system and printed out a series of emails between the defendant and Alufix.  These showed that Alufix had contacted the defendant asking for payment and he had repeatedly stalled by, for instance, saying that cheques had been returned as "not known at this address". 

A formal complaint was made to the States of Jersey police, and the defendant was arrested on a warrant in Wales and transported to Jersey where he was rearrested and cautioned. 

Second Indictment

Following a guilty plea to the charge on the First Indictment the defendant was due to be sentenced on 26^th February, 2010.  As part of his defence he submitted a number of references that raised the suspicion of the Crown as there appeared to be discrepancies in the letterhead.  The police were instructed to investigate and contacted one of the purported referees, who confirmed that he had not written the reference and would not have said the things contained in the letter. 

The defendant was interviewed and admitted that he had written the letter on the prison computer but initially maintained that he had spoken first to one referee to check whether this was alright, and to ask him to approach the other two referees to ask them as well.  He later accepted that the alleged referees knew nothing about the content of the letters, and confirmed that he had written them and forged the signatures.  He maintained however that he firmly believed that the content of the fake letters was nonetheless what the alleged referees would have written.  When contacted, the referees disputed this. 

Details of Mitigation:

Guilty pleas on both counts, note expressing remorse, had led a blameless life for many years.  Assessed as being at moderately low risk of re-offending.

A total of £6,500 had been paid back, this being the money in his accounts at the time of arrest.  There was no realistic prospect of the remainder being returned. 

The defendant claimed that his actions in "skimming" £4,000 was standard industry practice and that he had not intended to defraud the full amount. 

Previous Convictions:

Five convictions for 14 offences under the alternative spelling of his name, including five counts of forgery, three counts of obtaining property by deception and one count of making a false representation.  First conviction was when the defendant was 42 years old. 

Conclusions:

First Indictment

Second Indictment

Total:  2 years' and 6 months' imprisonment.

Sentence and Observations of Court:

Conclusions granted.

R. C. P. Pedley, Esq., Crown Advocate.

Advocate I. C. Jones for the Defendant.

JUDGMENT

THE BAILIFF:

1.        Mr Shore, you were trusted by your employers to negotiate and supervise a contract for labour at the Airport.  In fact you invented a contract with a fictitious company and arranged for £18,300 to be paid, supposedly to that company, but in fact to your personal accounts.  The fraud was discovered when the real company that was providing the labour demanded its money in your absence.  You say that you intended to pay them and only keep the difference between their contract price, £14,000, and the price of the fictitious contract, that difference being £4,300.  But the fact remains you had not in fact paid anything over to the real company and your employer has had to pay the real company the full amount for its labour.  Some money has been recovered from you by your employer but the employer is still out of pocket to the extent of £11,760.  Furthermore, this is not your first offence of dishonesty. 

2.        We accept, as your Advocate has said, that for many years you led an entirely blameless life.  In recent years you have committed a number of offences of dishonesty and have served a short sentence of imprisonment.  In addition, on this occasion, you added to the seriousness of what you did by writing fictitious references for this hearing and so you have pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice.

3.        In mitigation Advocate Jones has said all that can be said on your behalf.  He emphasised the value of your guilty plea and we do accept that in cases of fraud, a guilty plea is of value and we accept that in this case.  Similarly he has referred us to your lengthy statement in which you express your remorse.  He has also referred to the other matters which perhaps contributed to this offence, but it was a clear breach of trust and the Court's policy on breaches of trust is well established; a prison sentence is required save in exceptional circumstances and there are none here.  Even making allowance for the guilty plea and the other matters your Advocate has referred to, we think the Crown's conclusions are correct.

4.        On the First Indictment the sentence will be one of 2 years' imprisonment and on the Second Indictment, the perversion of the course of justice, we impose the sentence of 6 months' imprisonment, consecutive, making a total of 2½ years imprisonment.  We note that you are trying to take advantage of the facilities in prison and we hope you continue to do so, so when you come out you will be well placed to begin your life again. 

Authorities

Kirkland-v-AG 2001/200.

AG-v-Harris [2004] JRC 020.

AG-v-Congdon 2001/231.

AG-v-Lenton 1992/N 10a.

AG-v-Tucker [2003] JRC 119.