The SUN HK : Filipina manager jailed 6 months for stealing $79k from restaurant

Jeans (left) accompanied by a male friend, leave Eastern court after an earlier hearing

A Filipina restaurant manager was sentenced to six months in prison yesterday, Friday, after being found guilty of stealing a total of $79,420.60, the earnings of Le Colonial, a Vietnamese restaurant she used to work for.

Ofelia Isabel F. Jeans, 35 years old, looked shaken when she heard the verdict and sentence meted on her by Magistrate Vivian Ho. She tried to ask for permission to call her family after her sentencing, but the magistrate firmly said, “No” and told Jeans to course her requests through her lawyer.

Jeans could be heard sobbing loudly after she was led away from the courtroom to begin her sentence. She was earlier allowed to post a $2,000 bail while her case was being heard.

DITO ANG DETALYE

The restaurant owner who gave testimony and was in court for the verdict, said afterwards that he felt sad about what happened, especially as Jeans has a 16-year-old daughter she is raising alone.

“I do not feel happy about this,” he said. “But we gave her enough chance to settle this matter between us, and she ignored us.”

Initially, Magistrate Ho asked if she should ask a probation officer to look after Jeans’ daughter who was said to have been left alone at home, but when she did not get a positive response from the defendant, dropped the idea.

TAWAG NA!

She was also left unmoved by the defense request for a community service or fine as sentence, saying the offence committed by Jeans involved a serious breach of trust, especially as the owner had trusted her to the extent that she was left to handle the restaurant’s cash earnings on a day-to-day basis.

The defense had tried to argue that a custodial sentence would tarnish Jeans’ 14-year record in the F&B industry, and leave her daughter unable to fend for herself.

The magistrate used seven months’ imprisonment as a starting point in sentencing, and gave only a month’s discount for the $42,450 that was returned to the restaurant, made up of $30,000 that the defendant voluntarily returned, and the $10,450 owed her as her last salary after being fired.

PINDUTIN

The prosecutor had sought to get a compensation order for $38,970 from Jeans to cover the balance of the amount that she stole, but Ho declined the request after being told that the defendant would have no means to repay that because she was going to jail.

The court heard earlier that Jeans had taken up a job as an assistant manager in a Tsim Sha Tsui restaurant for which she was paid $24,000 a month.

Jeans was initially charged with stealing a total of $83,976.60 cash from Le Colonial restaurant on Paterson St. in Causeway Bay from Mar. 14 to Sept 13, 2022, when she was fired by the owner for poor performance. An updated accounting showed the actual loss to be slightly lower, at around $79,400.

When the company accountant saw the amount of money that was missing the next day, he told the owner not to give Jeans her final pay. The owner then sent messages to the defendant via WhatsApp, offering to meet with her so they could settle the case between them. However, the defendant largely ignored the messages initially, saying she was ill, or no one would be left with her daughter at home, and other excuses.

On Sept. 15, 2022, the owner told Jeans that if she would not settle, he would have no choice but to go to the police. Jeans then agreed to meet up with the owner and the company accountant, and brought with her $30,000, saying it was all the money from the restaurant that she had taken home and intended to hand over.

But she did sign a document agreeing to return the balance of the money that she took from the restaurant. Afterwards, she sent several text messages to the owner, thanking him for keeping the matter private.

Despite this, she did not comply with her undertaking, so the owner was forced to report the matter to the police.

In court, Jeans had tried to challenge the validity of the document she signed in which she promised to return the balance of the missing amount, saying she was forced to sign it because of the owner’s threat to call in the police.

She also insisted she did not steal anything and that the $30,000 that she returned was all that was left with her as part of her task of keeping a certain amount each day in the restaurant for emergency purchases.

In dismissing these claims, the magistrate said she did not accept that Jeans was threatened in any way into signing the document, or that she did not understand its contents. She said the owner had merely stated a fact when he said the police would be called if the defendant did not agree to settle the matter privately.

The magistrate also found Jeans to be a dishonest and unreliable witness, while the owner and the accountant who both gave evidence, were truthful and reliable.