Fraudster gets another break

A former CIBC manager from Merritt who avoided jail after swindling $157,000 from her mother in law and the bank has caught another break.

Despite concerns from a prosecutor, a judge on Tuesday ordered that Hope Moira Donna Thomas, 43, should be allowed to handle cash at the salon where she now works in a managerial role.

Thomas is still serving a two-year conditional sentence order put in place last year after she pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000. Court heard she stole the money to bankroll a drug addiction.

In 2019, while she was a manager at the Merritt CIBC branch, Thomas redeemed $59,000 worth of mutual funds she had purchased for her mother in law. She also removed $34,000 from a joint account shared by her husband and mother in law, and obtained $64,000 by opening lines of credit and taking out loans in her mother in law’s name.

She avoided jail in part to allow her to work to pay back the $157,000 she stole, as well as a $300,000 fine levied by the Mutual Fund Dealers Association.

A condition of Thomas' sentence prohibits her from “having authority over” money or anything valuable as part of her work.

In September, when she told her probation officer that she was handling small amounts of cash at work, Thomas was told to file an application to vary her sentence so that she would avoid a breach charge.

She said she's being promoted to manager of the salon she has been working at for the last two years.

“My duties include making schedules and just running the day-to-day operations,” she said. "The owner does all of our banking and all of our payroll — I have nothing to do with it.”

Thomas said she will handle cash at a till, but that’s it.

Crown prosecutor Camille Cook opposed the application and said Thomas’ plan is not realistic.

“There are instances where who knows what can happen, and I don’t think Ms. Thomas can 100 per cent never be involved with the handling of money,” she said.

“It just seems really implausible. If somebody gets sick and she’s the only person available and she’s in a managerial role, how is it that she will not be doing any of that?"

But Kamloops provincial court Judge Ray Phillips granted the application and varied the condition, pointing to Thomas’ sobriety and the lack of any breaches to this point in her sentence.

“You’ve been accountable as far as I can see, so I am going to cut you a bit of a break here,” he said.