THE QUEEN v. LAU WING PING

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

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JUDGMENT

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Silke, J.A.:

1. The Applicant, Lau Wing Ping, was convicted on his own plea before Mr. Paterson-Todd, sitting as a Deputy Judge of the District Court, of ten offences of false accounting and obtaining property by deception, each offence complementing the other, in other words, five false accounting and five obtaining property.

2. There were a further ninety similar offences taken into consideration. All of them occurred while he was in the employ of Whimsy Company Limited which employment stretched from May of 1983 to October of 1985. The offences, including those taken into consideration, had occurred between April 1984 and September of 1985. In each the method was the same. It was his duty to collect from employees work sheets to calculate the salaries, to certify them to the Managing Director and then get the money for them.

3. In each case, there was falsification and the total amount obtained over that period of both the actual charges and those taken into consideration was $75,378. The sentence imposed on him is one of twenty months' imprisonment and a three month suspended sentence was activated.

4. The Applicant takes two points before us. First in relation to the suspended sentence: as that offence was committed after the end of the charge period, then the sentence imposed thereon should not have been activated. Secondly, he asks us to reduce the sentence of twenty months on the basis that he has employment and his employer will wait for him. He asks to be released early so that he can work and reform himself and also to look after his aged parents and take up the family burden.

5. On the first point, we accept that this is correct. The suspended sentence should not have been activated in the circumstances which pertained here.

6. On the second. This was a lengthy and premeditated system of fraud. The Applicant was in a position of trust. The trial judge considered that a sentence of two years would have been a proper sentence but he gave him credit for his plea and passed the sentence to which I have referred. We can see nothing wrong in the exercise of his discretion by the trial judge.

7. The appeal would, therefore, be allowed in this sense only that the activation of the suspended sentence will be set aside. The sentence of twenty months' imprisonment is confirmed.