A London Drugs employee has been sentenced to two years in jail and ordered to pay $750,000 for stealing $2 million worth of laptops from the store’s Richmond distribution centre.
Carlos Cenon Santos was sentenced in Richmond Provincial Court in mid-July for thefts that occurred over a five-year period.
Santos, who is 34 years old, pleaded guilty to one count of theft over $5,000.
In her decision, Judge Nancy Phillips described how Santos, who worked in London Drugs’ warehouse, would unpackage a laptop and slip it under his shirt, take it to the locker room where he placed it in a pack and then walk out with it at the end of his shift.
Phillips noted Santos “took advantage” of the fact he knew employee bags weren’t searched when employees left at the end of the day.
Santos then sold the laptops at a discount on Craigslist.
Santos started working at London Drugs in 2016 and it was early in 2017 when he started stealing items. Phillips noted the thefts became “more frequent when he moved into the high-value area of the warehouse…”
A supervisor, however, observed a laptop “on his person” and London Drugs started doing surveillance and checking CCTV footage. They saw him, in the course of their surveillance, stealing $100,000 worth of items.
When he was confronted by store management, Santos admitted to the thefts over five years and gave an itemized list of the stolen items and their value. He was described as “fully cooperative.”
He confessed to police and returned 13 items that he hadn’t sold yet.
“He added that he was unhappy with the company and its wages and pace, and he started to steal in a bit of an act of vengeance against his employer,” Phillips said in her decision.
In a victim impact statement, London Drugs’ manager of investigations, Kimberly Radomsky, described the theft as “devastating,” adding Santos was a “trusted employee who violated the store’s trust.”
In considering a sentence, Phillips noted aggravating factors included the evidence that Santos “abused a position of trust or authority” while committing the crime.
But she also took into consideration his “guilty plea and full cooperation.”
While Santos took advantage of being in a position of trust, Phillips said it wasn’t a case where he could take advantage of company finances to commit the theft, such as working in accounting, management or bookkeeping, nor did he create false records.
The large scale of the theft, however, was “staggering,” Phillips said, stealing 245 items over five years.
“It was clearly deliberate, intentional, and planned,” she said in her decision. “And Mr. Santos did not stop until he was caught, otherwise it continued unabated and undetected.”
Santos was sentenced to two years in a federal prison and ordered to pay $750,000 to London Drugs in restitution.
Phillips noted, in the sentencing decision, Santos admitted shame for his actions and acknowledged his responsibility.
Imposing a jail sentence will act as a “general deterrence,” she said.
“Others who might be so minded to act similarly need to know by this sentence that the consequence most of the time is going to be a real jail sentence so that people are deterred,” Phillips said. “Employers need to have a level of trust regardless of measures that are built in. Otherwise, they simply could not continue to operate profitably.”
The sentencing was imposed on July 19.
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