CHAN LAI HA v. R.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

1994, No. 78
(Criminal)

___________

_______________

J U D G M E N T

_______________

Keith J. (giving the judgment of the Court):

1. The Applicant was indicted in the District Court on an indictment containing 26 counts of obtaining property by deception. She pleaded not guilty to all counts. She was convicted on 6 counts - counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 - and acquitted on the 20 remaining counts. On 14th February 1994, she was sentenced to three years' imprisonment on each of the first three counts to be served concurrently with each other, one year's imprisonment on the 4th and 5th counts to be served concurrently with each other and with the sentences imposed on the first three counts, and one year's imprisonment consecutive on count 7, making four years' imprisonment in all. She now applies for leave to appeal against sentence, having abandoned her application for leave to appeal against conviction.

2. The Applicant's victim in counts 1-5 was a woman sufficiently close to her that she regarded her as her godmother. On count 1, she told her godmother about a number of flats which were available for purchase at a discount because she knew someone in the property division of the developers. Her godmother was persuaded that large profits could be made, and she therefore paid $63,000 to the Applicant. In counts 2 and 3, the Applicant persuaded her godmother to give her sums totalling $70,000, telling her that they would be used to purchase Australian dollars. In counts 4 and 5, the Applicant persuaded her godmother to pay her sums totalling $13,100 by telling her that the sums represented bank charges on the transfer of various sums from her account to her godmother's account. Count 7 was similar to count 1: the Applicant's victim was another woman to whom the Applicant had spoken of the availability of a number of flats for purchase at a discount, and she paid the Applicant $70,000.

3. What the Applicant had told her godmother and her other victim was untrue. Flats were not available at a discount. The Applicant had no intention of purchasing Australian dollars on behalf of her godmother, nor did the Applicant intend to transfer money to her godmother's account. When the Applicant received the money to which the 6 counts related, she kept the money for herself and cunningly allayed the suspicion of her victims by getting people to telephone them up and confirm what she had told them.

4. The offences which the Applicant committed were undoubtedly serious. She inveigled herself into the confidence of her victims. Once they had put their trust in her, she cynically cheated them over a substantial period. The sums which the Applicant obtained on the 6 counts on which she was convicted totalled $216,100, which was a not insubstantial sum. None of the sums which the Applicant obtained from them had been repaid. Indeed, the judge described the Applicant as "devious and unscrupulous", and having shown "not one shred of remorse" for what she had done. The judge, in our view, cannot be faulted for taking the view that substantial sentences of imprisonment were called for, nor can he be faulted for imposing a consecutive sentence on count 7. It is true that, broadly speaking, the deception was the same as that in count 1, but the victims were different, and there was a gap of eleven months between the two offences.

5. We do not regard the fact that the Applicant is now pregnant as justifying any reduction in her sentence. Nor do we think that the fact that these offences were comparatively stale at the time of her trial can count in her favour. It was, after all, her calculated attempts to conceal what had really happened to her victims' money which resulted in the police investigation being delayed, and the delay thereafter was caused by her going to Canada and then having difficulty raising money for her legal representation at her trial. Despite the fact that she was only 21 when she began to commit these offences, and despite the fact that she had hitherto been of good character, we find it quite impossible to characterise the sentences which the judge imposed as excessive. This application for leave to appeal against sentence is therefore refused.