The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

APPELLATE judges yesterday questioned whether a Supreme Court judge was right in sentencing a former College of the Bahamas employee to potentially 20 years in prison for stealing over $700,000 from the institution over a seven-year period.

Appellate President Sir Hartman Longley questioned if former COB accounts clerk Chimeka Gibbs is not effectively serving a "life sentence" for stealing $704,580 from the college, now the University of The Bahamas, between March 2008 and October 2015.

Though the 40-year-old was actually ordered to serve 15 years in prison, the sentence could jump to 20 years if she fails to pay back the $704,580 she stole from the college via annual instalments of $140,916 within the next five years.

Given that possibility, Justice Milton Evans questioned if the Crown wanted the court to "put her under the prison".

"People have received less (time) for manslaughter--and the Crown has not appealed," Justice Evans noted.

The questions were put forth during Gibbs' appeal of the sentence passed down on her by Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson.

In February 2018, a nine-member jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on all 24 criminal counts--16 counts of falsification of accounts and eight of stealing by reason of employment.

Prior to convicting Gibbs, who, according to court documents, served as both a senior clerk and a human resources assistant at the former college, the jury was told Gibbs falsified numerous COB direct deposit files, the result of which purported to show she was entitled to over $200,000 in salary payments.

Gibbs accomplished the latter feat by manipulating the information contained on certain documents to be submitted to the Bank of the Bahamas on behalf of COB.

In COB's Great Plains system, she would alter the net direct deposit amount for one or more employees that would be captured in the "direct deposit AHC transmittal report". She would then process the pay cycle in accordance to normal procedures and generate all the required reports for review. Those reports would be saved to the network, and some would be emailed to senior officials for review and vetting.

Gibbs was always careful never to alter the actual net direct deposit for her own account.

She would subsequently make adjustments to the net direct deposits for the same staff accounts by setting them back to their correct direct deposit amounts. Then, she would apply the difference to her own direct deposit accounts.

Gibbs would also prepare a salary difference report that showed the change in salaries from the prior month against the current pay cycle. That file would be sent to COB's VP of finance for review, who would give the okay to proceed and send the pay data to the Bank of the Bahamas (BOB). And that file always contained the correct salary amounts for herself and other staff.

However, the VP of finance would never see the payroll direct deposit file that was ultimately sent to BOB. And as that file did not contain the same information that was in the salary difference report, the VP of finance would never have detected the difference.

As a result, Gibbs received up to $13,000 over and above her monthly net salary of $2,395 between 2008 and 2015. In total, Gibbs paid herself $640,000 extra between those seven years to various bank accounts at Commonwealth Bank, Scotiabank FirstCaribbean International Bank and the Royal Bank of Canada. And according to the Crown, the amount she stole increased every year.

In April of that year, Justice Grant-Thompson sentenced her to six years in prison on counts one, four, seven and 10, and nine years on counts 13, 16, 19 and 22; those were the stealing by reason of employment charges.

Justice Grant-Thompson also sentenced Gibbs to nine years in prison on the remaining 16 counts of falsification of accounts--six years for eight and three years for another eight, that were also ordered to run consecutively. That made for a total of nine years on those counts.

However, Justice Grant-Thompson ordered that the sentences relative to the separate charges are ultimately to run concurrently, making for 15 years in total.

Gibbs was also ordered to pay back the money she stole from COB within the next five years, via annual installments of $140,916.

Failure to do so will result in an additional year in prison, Justice Grant-Thompson said, meaning Gibbs could end up serving 20 years behind bars if she defaults.

The judge also ordered that the $66,369.26 on Gibbs' various bank accounts be forfeited to the Public Treasury.

Yesterday, Gibbs' attorney Murrio Ducille submitted the sentence passed was "unduly severe". Especially that, in his view, his client was convicted on inadmissible evidence that bore no relation to the 24 charges she was ultimately convicted on.

However, Crown prosecutor Al-Leecia Delancy submitted the sentence was not unduly severe and adequately reflected the seriousness of the crimes committed.

However, Sir Michael Barnett noted the maximum sentence Gibbs could have received on the charges is 10 years. Thus, he said he could understand if the Crown was arguing for a sentence close to the max, say eight years for example.

However, Sir Michael said to "tack on" the consecutive sentences "so as to effectively punish her for more than the law would allow" seemed to be "wrong in principle".

Sir Michael further asserted even if he and his fellow justices could justify Gibbs' consecutive sentences, there is still the issue of the rationale behind Justice Grant-Thompson ordering "additional incarceration" in default of the annual payments, especially considering Gibbs is incarcerated.

The appellate judges have reserved their decision on the matter.