Derrick Thomas, a local businessman convicted by Justice Charles Quin last April for falsely obtaining approx. $100,000 from customers of his geothermal air conditioning company Geocomfort, won his appeal for the length of his jail term.

Thomas conned at least four customers, between April 2009 and January 2010 out of $ 99,600 and wrote two bad cheques for almost $3,000 to the Cayman Free Press as payment for advertisements he had placed with them for the geothermal system that uses less power to cool therefore benefitting the customer with cheaper power bills.

Justice Quin in his sentencing said Thomas “cheated four separate customers and showed no regard for the loss of the significant sums of money they incurred. The court takes into account the fact that the jobs the defendant promised to do and was paid to do were never done. Therefore the customers not only lost the money they had handed to the defendant but they had to pay other companies to do the job that they hired and paid the defendant to do.

“The defendant has shown a callous disregard for these unsuspecting victims. He made false representations, knowing that the jobs would never be completed. He is the consummate con man. There are few, if any, mitigating factors in this case and many aggravating features in the 4 Counts of theft and the one Count of obtaining services by deception.

“It is my view that, in light of these factors as well as the defendant’s previous convictions for similar offences, the starting point should  be five years’ imprisonment. In light of the Defendant’s late guilty plea I will allow for a reduction of 20% and impose a sentence of imprisonment of 4 years for each of the counts of theft, to run concurrently.

“Count 1 [false cheque for advertising] is an entirely separate offence from Counts 3, 7, 11 and 14 and, accordingly, I impose a sentence of 6 months for this offence, to run consecutive to the four years for Counts 3, 7, 11 and 14. Time spent in custody is to be taken into consideration.”

However, the court of appeal disagreed with the sentence and Judge Quin’s reasoning.

They said the judge had not justified his high starting point of five years that he discounted to four as a result of the, albeit late, guilty plea. Appeals Court President, Sir John Chadwick, said, “Four years was manifestly too high and the judge does not explain how he reached his starting point.”

The three appeal judges also concluded this was not a traditional breach of trust case as Thomas was not a lawyer, accountant or an employee of a professional services firm. He had conned his customers out of deposits or money on account that they would normally expect to pay up front for this type of contractual work.

They also said the sums that Thomas stole were not enough to place it in the highest brackets of the sentencing guidelines for theft as set out by Justice Quin.

They did not think Thomas deliberately set out with the deliberate intention of defrauding customers with a dishonest business but rather it was a case of him being ill equipped to conduct the business

When the business went wrong Thomas should have stopped but he continued on taking money from clients even though he knew he could not provide the service.

The Appeal Justices said they had taken note that Thomas had a previous history of similar dishonesty.

Never-the-less they reduced the four counts of theft from four years to 27 months and the six months for the bounced cheques to be reduced to three months.

The new sentence was a total of 30 months.