If you are charged with theft/fraud under 5000 are there…

Hello

I'm a criminal lawyer who can assist with your inquiry. The answer to your answer is complicated and case dependent. To start, legally, it is possible to avoid a jail sentence for a theft / fraud under $5,000, even in a breach of trust context (ie, employer - employee relationship).

The overall financial loss in question, as well as the length of time the offences occurred over, will, by and large, dictate the sentencing range for a first time offender who has committed these types of offence. The larger the loss, the more at risk of a jail sentence the offender is.

One lucky break that the accused has caught (at least so far) in this case, is that the charges are laid as multiple counts of Theft / Fraud Under $5,000. Assuming that the loss in question is Over $5,000 (which, if I had to guess, I would say it is, given the number of counts), the Police could have laid a Fraud Over / Theft Over $5,000 charge, which would remove a non-custodial sentence (non jail sentence) from the range of punishments available -- namely a Conditional Sentence (which is informally known as house arrest). This sentence is not available for Fraud or Theft Over $5,000 charges. This sentence is available for the offences of Fraud and Theft Under $5,000, however.

Having a clean record and being an upstanding citizen in this type of situation is not looked always looked at in the same light as compared with other criminal offending, as Courts sometimes find that the offender used their clean background to obtain the position of trust they were in, and then violated the trust of their employer by committing the offences in question.

In my experience dealing with these types of cases, an accused is at a high risk of jail once the financial loss in question is considered "significant".

Whether the accused ultimately makes restitution for any of the losses suffered would be a factor that can influence sentencing. But for very significant losses, even substantial up front restitution may not be enough to stave off a jail sentence.