A former Burnaby school bookkeeper found guilty of stealing a total of nearly $99,000 from two former employers should spend time in jail, according to the prosecutor in the case.
Jodi Fingarsen, who worked as a bookkeeper at Alpha Secondary from 2007 to 2010, was first charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000 in February 2013 in relation to her employment at Alpha and her time at the Altus Group in Vancouver between July 2011 and October 2011.
After numerous delays, she was finally found guilty by B.C. Provincial Court Judge Joseph Galati in December and was back in court for a sentencing hearing Tuesday.
Her defence lawyer, John Banks called for a conditional or intermittent sentence but didn’t specify the duration.
He argued his client did not present a danger to the community in the future.
“She’s a very low risk, and you could take a chance, if I can put it that way,” Banks told the judge.
The defence lawyer also cited a psychiatric assessment presented during the hearing and referred to a “psychiatric issue” Fingarsen had that would not be resolved by jail time.
Crown counsel Jennifer Horneland, however, argued the psychiatric report did not point to any mental health issues that should impact the bookkeeper’s sentence.
The prosecutor called for two years less a day of jail time, saying Fingarsen was at high risk to reoffend.
“In my submission, there would be a high risk that she would reoffend because she fails to appreciate that she committed these offences,” Horneland told the NOW. “She takes no responsibility for it; therefore, if she’s released, she will very likely do the very same thing because she hasn’t applied her mind to accepting responsibility and changing her behaviour.”
Jail time is a realistic prospect for Fingarsen, according Horneland.
“There were no mitigating factors,” she said. “There’s no guilty plea, there’s no remorse, there’s no repayment of the money, there’s no apology, there’s nothing that would cause a judge to say, ‘OK, I’ll give you a break here. I’ll give you a chance.’”
At the end of the hearing, Galati asked Fingarsen if she wanted to say anything to the court, but she declined.
Galati will hand down his sentence April 6.
