Window cleaner jailed for £1,500 cash grab

Saturday 26 March 2022

A window cleaner who climbed in through a client's bathroom window and stole £1,500-worth of foreign currency has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.

Gilberto De Sousa Fernandes (32) was sentenced in the Royal Court on Friday to one count of illegal entry and larceny, committed on 16 November 2020.

Fernandes denied the offence, but a jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict at the end of a trial last month.

Setting out the facts of the case, Crown Advocate Rebecca Morley-Kirk said that on the day of the offence, Fernandes and a colleague were washing the exterior windows of a property he had cleaned a number of times during his four years with the company they worked for.

She said: “At approximately 14:30, the owner of the property returned. He noted that the cleaners were present, as their ladders were propped against the wall leading up to the ensuite bathroom window at the front of the property on the first floor.

“The owner noticed that the larger pane of the window was slightly open, which he thought was odd as he and his wife rarely open this section of the window.”

Pictured: Crown Advocate Rebecca Morley-Kirk was prosecuting at sentencing.

The lawyer added: “As [Fernandes] reached the top of the stairs, he must have heard the owner come back, panicked and moved hurriedly back to the bathroom window to make his escape, making a noise in the process, which the owner heard from the floor below.

“As [Fernandes] turned around to make his escape, he must have dropped his cleaning cloth on the floor. This cloth was later seized and it was to provide significant evidence against him.”

A faint footprint was also later discovered on the bathroom toilet seat.

After hearing the bump, the owner went upstairs to investigate, where he found the cloth, which was later found to have Fernandes’ DNA on it. Looking out a window, the owner noticed that the cleaners and their van had left and an invoice had been put through the letterbox.

Advocate Morley-Kirk said that immediately before this, Fernandes’ colleague had gone to a nearby public toilet and was away from the property for around ten minutes.

The owners later discovered that £1,500 worth of dollars and euros were missing, which have never been found.

In defence, Advocate Francesca Pinel said that it had been an “impulsive and opportunistic” offence. She added that Fernandes had no previous convictions, there was a low risk of him reoffending, and that the delay in bringing the case to trial had not been his fault.

Passing sentence, Deputy Bailiff Robert MacRae, who was sitting with Jurats Robert Christensen and Kim Averty, said that Fernandes had breached the trust put in him by his employer.

He added that the owners of the property had suffered stress and anxiety after the break-in, which had been exacerbated by their requirement to give testimony in the trial, which they did from behind a screen so they didn’t have to look at the defendant.

“We note that you continue to deny offence,” said the judge to Fernandes, “but you were convicted on the basis of compelling evidence.”

He said that the Court had “no hesitation in finding case so serious that only a custodial sentence is justified.”