Christmas Eve fraudster bought iWatch with ill-gotten gains

Saturday 09 December 2017

A fraudster who admitted to illegally pocketing £400 of other people’s money on Christmas Eve and cashed over £6,000 in falsified cheques before using his ill-gotten gains to buy an Apple Watch, will spend the festive period behind bars.

Luis Miguel Fernandes (25) was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to two counts of cheque fraud, and ten counts of card fraud and attempted card fraud, between November and December last year.

The Royal Court heard that the Madeiran national – a shop worker in Unifare, Spearmel and Aquila Stores – had altered pay cheques from his employer throughout November 2016, before progressing onto card fraud in the month of December.

A number of members of the public reported to Police that their debit cards had been used at Aquila and/or Unifare stores that month, leading the Police to investigate the company.

A co-worker told the Police that he had shown, “suspicious behaviour at work.”

“She stated that she saw the defendant doing “strange things” at the till. She said saw the defendant using card numbers stored on his iPhone or his iWatch to make transactions on the store payment card machine,” Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit told the Court.

That iWatch was one of the “luxury items” that Fernandes purchased for himself using money from his offences.  He was also found to have bought a television worth £499 in cash.

When asked about the spending, Fernandes told Police that both had been purchased by his step-father – the step-father later confirmed that this was not true.

He had also explained to Police that one of the sums deposited into his account - £1,769.86 – was actually from gambling winnings, which he’d placed in his account to keep “more safe.”

He also said that some of the money was from a friend in Madeira who would sometimes send him cash, and that he would also occasionally be paid in cash for jobs for a friend.

Fernandes was later arrested and placed in custody. He had been due to stand trial in November, but at the “eleventh hour” – with witnesses ready in the waiting room – he decided to plead guilty to the charges.

In trying to secure a lesser sentence, Fernandes’ advocate told Bailiff William Bailhache, who sat with jurats Jerry Ramsden and Jane Ronge, that he had already heard “the clang of the prison door twice” having already spent more than eight months in custody before his sentencing.

Instead, it was suggested that he pay compensation to his victims. With his small savings, he was said to be able to afford repayments of £50 per week if he was given a community service sentence and managed to find employment afterwards.

But the Court did not agree, nor did they accept claims that the amounts fraudulently obtained were not as substantial as previous fraud cases and therefore worthy of a sentence reduction.

He was therefore handed 18 months behind bars and also faces deportation, with the Bailiff concluding that his familial links to the island – he had attended school in Jersey during his teenage years and intermittently been employed on the island – were not strong enough to outweigh the “detriment that the island community suffers” from his presence.

An confiscation order was also made on his iPhone and Apple watch.

Fernandes, who was supported by his girlfriend in court, did not react as he was told that he would spend 18 months in prison.