HKSAR v. CHAN WAI SUN

DCCC 549/2015

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO 549 OF 2015

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REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Charge

1. Defendant pleads guilty to one count of theft. This is a breach-of-trust case.  Defendant stole from his employer’s warehouse.  The goods were stored there by a customer. 

Facts

2. Defendant had worked for his employer, Gotongo, since November 2007.  Defence Counsel says Defendant first worked there as a mere worker.  He was promoted to the supervisory rank in 2012.  At the material time, Defendant’s responsibility in the company’s warehouse was to check out the goods stored there.

3. A customer, Reallytek, sent four lots of electronic chips to the warehouse for storage between October 2014 and April 2015. 

4. On 6 May 2015, a staff of Reallytek went to the warehouse in order to collect some of the stored goods.  He found the boxes were light.  He then opened them and discovered that the zinc packing inside had been cut open.  Some of the chips were missing.

5. It was found out that a total of 714,000 electronic chips had been stolen.  They were worth US$1.089 million, which was equivalent to HK$8.5 million.

6. Police reviewed the CCTV record of the warehouse.  They found Defendant on 3 May 2015, a Sunday, appear inside the warehouse.  The camera captured that Defendant took away some boxes and then went to another area not covered by the camera.  Defendant later returned the boxes to their original position.  The camera captured Defendant’s repeating such removal act several times that day.  On that day, Defendant left the warehouse on two occasions.  Each time, he carried with him a big box.

7. Defendant was arrested on 7 May 2015.  Under caution, he admitted that he had stolen the electronic chips.  Later, he further told police that he went back to the warehouse on some Sundays on 15 occasions altogether.  He had sold all the stolen chips to a recycle company at HK$1 per piece.  He made between fifty to seventy thousand Hong Kong dollars on each occasion.  He just told the recycle company that the chips were abandoned materials.  Defendant told police that he was addicted to gambling and, therefore, he had got into financial difficulty.

8. All the stolen goods have not been recovered. Defendant is unable to compensate to any extent.  The warehouse insurer is still looking at the case.  It is not known who would bear the losses finally.

Record

9. Defendant is now aged 27.  He has a clear record. 

Mitigation

10. Counsel says Defendant used to live with his aged mother, his wife and two young daughters.  Defendant was the sole breadwinner of the family.  He earned $14,500 per month as a warehouse supervisor.  Unfortunately, he got addicted to gambling and lost heavily.  He then borrowed from some finance companies which got him into more troubles. When he could not pay back the debts, the debt collector would harass his family.  Defendant finally committed the present theft out of stupidity.

11. Counsel says Defendant’s thievish act was unsophisticated.  It was all done by himself.

12. Counsel agrees that Defendant had breached his employer’s trust.  Counsel refers to the sentence tariff laid down in the case of Ng Kwok Wing CACC 398/2007.  There, the Court of Appeal said that for cases involving stolen goods worth between HK$3 million to HK$15 million, the starting point should be between 5 to 10 years of imprisonment.  Counsel asks this court to be as lenient as possible.  Counsel suggests a starting point as low as 6 years of imprisonment.

13. In his mitigation letter, Defendant expresses remorse and asks for leniency. 

Sentence

14. Defence Counsel has said all he can. Nevertheless, Defendant’s thievish act of stealing around HK$8.5 million worth of goods from his employer’s warehouse on 15 different occasions was indeed a serious offence.  The theft as a whole was not a sophisticated one but it was certainly carried out according to Defendant’s wish and plan.  It straddled over several months.  Defendant had a clear record before but that is not a strong mitigation.  The only good mitigation in this case is Defendant’s co-operation with the police and his pleading guilty in the first instance.  He will be entitled to the full one-third discount.  Bearing in mind that a lot of goods worth around HK$8.5 million had been stolen and there is no recovery, I have to adopt 7 years’ imprisonment as the starting point.  I give Defendant one-third discount.  I pass on him an imprisonment term of 4 years and 8 months.