Currency mix-up contributed to “excessive” sentence
A con man who stole nearly US$300,000 from a pension fund to fuel his coke habit and then attempted to flee the country on a cruise ship has had his sentence reduced on appeal.
Robert Schultz, the former administrator of the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce pension scheme, forged signatures to rip off investors over a two-year period. He was jailed for five years in December 2012.
The sentence was reduced to four years after a trio of Appeals Court justices ruled the initial jail term was “manifestly excessive.”
They suggested the sentencing judge had wrongly believed that the amount stolen was denominated in Cayman Islands dollars rather than U.S. dollars and had therefore mistakenly based his sentence on a false impression of the level of the theft.
They also point out that the judge did not consider the impact of inflation and currency exchange rates in his application of sentencing guidelines based on “monetary bands” established in a 1998 U.K. case.
The original 2012 hearing heard that Schultz, who is from the U.S., forged the signatures of two of the trustees of the Chamber pension fund – a scheme used by businesses to provide pensions to their employees – in order to steal US$289,660.12 between April 2009 and June 2011.
Schultz claimed all the money had gone to feed his cocaine habit, which was at one stage costing him up to $500 a day.
He was caught at the Royal Watler dock trying to board the Carnival Valor cruise ship in April 2012 while on bail in connection with the theft allegations.
The Appeals Court judges argued that the original sentence had rightly factored in to the “attempt to abscond” as well as the serious breach of public trust involved in the theft.
But they ruled that Justice Charles Quin had erred in his application of sentencing bands for this type of offense established in a U.K. case from 1998.
They said inflation and proper consideration of the exchange rate between the British pound sterling and the U.S. dollar pushed the offense into a lower category.
The 1998 case established band widths for terms of imprisonment based on the amount stolen.
Justice Quin, in his original sentence, argued that the Cayman dollar and the British pound could be considered as roughly equivalent in terms of spending power and ruled that Schultz case fell into the £250,000 to £1 million category, attracting a sentence of five to nine years.
The Appeals Court judges decided it should have been put in the lower category of £100,000 to £250,000 and would attract a three- to four-year sentence as a “starting point.”
In their ruling, the three judges pointed out, “The theft was not denominated in pounds. The indictment alleges an amount in US dollars. The judge appears to have misread this as CI dollars.”
They add, “Even were the judge right about parity, the fact that the sum is charged in US dollars and not CI dollars would still push it into the lower bracket because it was always near the borderline.”
They acknowledged that the U.K. case provides “guidelines,” not “tramlines,” but conclude that the judge erred “in principle” by putting the case, financially, in the higher bracket.
They added, “Taking into account the seriousness of the breach of trust and the sustained nature of the appellant’s conduct a sentence of four years imprisonment is appropriate in this case.”
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