Mother jailed for repeated thefts from employers
File image. © Andrew Bardwell
A mother of four wept throughout her sentencing as she was jailed for 23 months for her third set of offending by stealing from her employers.
Milne – now a solo mother – was already struggling to pay back money to a previous victim at the time she stole from the small business that employed her last year.
She still owed $13,343 and had only just finished a sentence of community detention and intensive supervision imposed in 2012, when she got her latest job and spent a year stealing another $48,609.
Christchurch District Court Judge Jane Farish noted previous convictions on Milne’s record for theft in 2000 and theft of $5800 from another employer in 2001.
She noted her offending was repeating and escalating and said she saw Milne as a high risk of reoffending.
Defence counsel Josh Lucas argued that not jailing Milne would allow her to pay reparation and keep caring for her four children, two of whom have high needs. After taking budgeting advice and moving to a house with a lower rental, she was offering to pay $100 a week.
Milne’s mother has remortgaged her house to pay for the previous reparations and her father was offering to help with the current repayments. Milne also offered to pay over a Working for Families repayment she expected in the next few months.
But Judge Farish said the reparation offer was unrealistic and would still leave the victims – who were badly affect financially and through a loss of trust at the workplace – waiting for years for their money.
She said she had examined Milne’s financial records and saw that she had been struggling even with her wages, support from the government, and the money she had stolen.
Milne did not have an issue with alcohol misuse, gambling, or an extravagant lifestyle, but had been living beyond her means. She had been spending on coffees, meals out, and internet services.
Over the last few years her tactic had been to “borrow, borrow, and borrow” to make ends meet. She had chosen the easy option of stealing from her employers.
When she embarked on the latest set of offending – 15 thefts from her employers at regular intervals, carried out through withdrawals and transfers with some sophistication, the police said – she must have known the effect on her children when she was caught.
The judge ruled out a sentence of home detention, jailing Milne for 23 months and telling her she did not have confidence that home detention would lower her risk of reoffending.
Milne must have known she risked going to jail when she began the offending. She was the only person who was responsible for the position she was in.
Judge Farish also ordered Milne to pay $10,000 towards the reparations, with payments of $50 a week, after her release from prison.
Category: News
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