SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A man sentenced to house-arrest for stealing more than $11,000 from his employer could have avoided a criminal record had he begun paying back the money, court was told last week.
Former Ice Wireless manager Patrick Peers was handed 14 months of house arrest after he pleaded guilty to stealing $11,787.24 from the company over a four-month period while he worked at the retail store in Centre Square Mall. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo |
Ice Wireless finally gave up and called police Feb. 3, 2015, five months after Patrick Peers, the company's former store manager in Yellowknife, was caught pocketing money from sales totalling $11,787.24.
The 27-year-old was handed a 14-month conditional sentence in territorial court Friday, to be followed by 11 months of probation, after pleading guilty to four counts of theft. The money stolen accounted for nearly 75 per cent of sales made at the Ice Wireless retail shop at the Centre Square Mall between May and August 2014.
Reading from an agreed statements of facts, Crown prosecutor Jacqueline Porter said Peers made the first of his thefts from the store in May, shortly after being hired as one of two employees in April 2014.
"Between May 1 and Aug. 19, 2014, Mr. Peers stole the proceeds of 74 cash transactions made at the Ice Wireless store in Yellowknife by processing the transaction but failing to deposit the proceeds into Ice Wireless's bank account," she said.
Peers was the only employee tasked with the responsibility of making the cash deposits to the company account, said Porter. He was caught after the company's billing department noticed transactions carried out in its Yellowknife store in May and June had not been deposited to the company account.
She said a billing and finance representative e-mailed Peers and his co-worker July 23 to tell them about the missing deposits, and asked them to send in their deposit slips.
The representative wrote again on Aug. 1 and Aug. 5 and finally heard back from Peers on Aug. 7, said Porter, at which time Peers said he couldn't find the slips.
The prosecutor said after another stern e-mail arrived from the finance representative, Peers sent a scanned copy of deposit slips on Aug. 8. Two of those slips - in the amount of $1,860 and $1,840 respectively - were never deposited to the company account, said Porter.
She said Peers' direct supervisor in Markham, Ont., began investigating the missing deposits late in August and realized Peers had been pocketing proceeds from company sales.
Fifty-six per cent of the store's cash sales were stolen in May, 94.5 per cent in June, 91 per cent in July and 25.6 per cent in August, said Porter. The supervisor confronted Peers and on Sept. 3 and Peers admitted to stealing from the company, she said. He was later fired.
According to the prosecutor, the supervisor told Peers charges would not be laid if he paid back the money. Peers agreed to make six equal payments over six months to return the cash, she said. When he failed to make the first payment, the supervisor gave him a 45-day extension, said Porter.
After that deadline went by Peers was given another two-month extension but he still failed to pay. It was then that the supervisor finally called police.
Peers pleaded guilty to the thefts on Aug. 18, 2015, said Porter.
At his sentencing last week, Peers said he does not have a good excuse for taking the money. He said he failed to return any of it - even after being offered a second and then a third chance -because he didn't know how.
"I don't know how to go about doing it," he said.
Peers' lawyer, Leslie Moore, said Peers took the cash because he wanted "to show his friends he was able to buy things."
Moore said his client was so embarrassed by the charges he refused to allow friends and family to be contacted as witnesses to his good character.
"That's an indication of his embarrassment at having to come before the court," said Moore.
Peers is well known in the arts and theatre community in Yellowknife and is currently the president of NWT Pride. He has no prior criminal record.
Nonetheless, Judge Bernadette Schmaltz said Peers' criminal actions breached the trust of his employers.
"No business can afford to lose 90 per cent of its take and carry on," she said. "They're paying you to work while you're stealing from them."
Schmaltz ordered Peers to begin paying back what he stole $500 at a time, starting in March 2016.
"This type of offence hurts the whole community," she said.
