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| Estate where theft took place |
By Leo A. Deocadiz
A domestic helper who stole 10 wristwatches from her employer and then tried to cover it up by claiming a burglar had entered their house from the roof of their three-floor house, was jailed for 23 months today at the District Court.
Vanessa Vallespin, 39 years old, tearfully confirmed she
understood the sentence when asked by Deputy District Judge Pang Leung-ting.
The sentence came after she pleaded guilty last Jan. 7 to
two counts of theft, contrary to section 9 of the Theft Ordinance, and to having
"knowingly misled" a police officer by giving false information that
the house was broken into, contrary to section 64(b) of the Police Force
Ordinance.
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| PINDUTIN PARA SA DETALYE |
In the first charge, Vallespin was convicted of stealing a Rolex
Daytona watch worth $200,000 from her male employer Gary Lau at Sunderland
Estate in Kowloon Tong on Dec. 2, 2024. Two days later, she stole nine more
watches worth $599,780, for the second conviction.
As recounted by Judge Pang, the thefts were discovered on Dec.
4 after Vallespin called his employer to say that she found the door leading to the
roof of their house’s third floor, as well as a drawer in the master’s bedroom,
had heen opened.
During investigation at the Hunghom police station, she told
a police officer that their house in Sunderland Estate on Hereford Road, Kowloon
Tong, had been burgled.
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| Basahin ang detalye! |
But she later confessed that she
stole the Rolex Daytona watch and pawned it, then stole nine more watches of
various luxury brands two days later.
All the watches have been subsequently
recovered -- the Rolex was retrieved from a pawnshop in Central and the nine
other watches were found in a bag which she hid among plants in their garden.
Judge Pang acknowledged the
defense lawyer’s mitigation that in the end, the employer suffered no loss, that
Vallespin confessed to the crime, that the crime was due to poor judgment
rather than malice to the employers, that she was nervous when she gave
misleading information to police, and that she had apologized to her employers.
He also noted that she thought of stealing the watches to be
able to pay off a $30,000 loan she took to help out a friend, a certain Mary Ann,
who needed money to go to Albania to work but who later abandoned the promise
to pay her back.
Judge Pang said that if sentencing guidelines were followed for
each of the items stolen, the total would be 40 months. Instead, he chose a
starting point of 33 months, from which he deducted one third or 11 months.
For misleading the police, he chose a starting point of three
months, of which only one month was added to Vallespin’s sentence for theft --
for an overall total of 23 months.
