Teller gets jail for helping bank robbers

Judge says she didn’t do enough to stop the heist, rejects plea to reduce sentence

Despite still further pleas from her lawyer for a sentence that wouldn’t mean automatic deportation, a Calgary judge on Friday sentenced bank teller Kenza Belakziz to 18 months in jail for setting up a robbery.

Justice David Gates said even though the additional factors presented by defence counsel Greg Dunn could reduce her sentence, it wasn’t enough to get it below six months.

Dunn had argued a medical report that indicated Belakziz, 24, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety — along with the fact she’s facing deportation and has been before the court for 31/2 years — was enough to justify a six-month sentence.

But Gates repeatedly told the lawyer the Supreme Court has said other consequences can’t be used as a factor in reducing an otherwise fit punishment.

“Mr. Dunn, I have to follow the law,” the Court of Queen’s Bench judge said.

“I can’t use collateral consequences to reduce what is otherwise an appropriate sentence.”

Last November, Gates rejected a joint sentencing submission from the Crown and Dunn for a sentence of six months less a day.

Dunn said a punishment of more than six months would automatically make his client, who was born in Morocco and never obtained Canadian citizenship, ineligible to remain in Canada.

Despite Gates’s earlier decision, Dunn continued to pursue the immigration issue.

“A sentence of over six months is essentially going to banish a girl who has all her ties to Canada, or North America, who hasn’t been to the state of Morocco since she was two,” he said.

Dunn said Belakziz moved with her family to Louisiana as a toddler and lived in Minnesota before moving to Canada when she was 10.

Despite all her family members becoming citizens, Belakziz never applied for citizenship.

Belakziz earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery in connection with a Nov. 24, 2014, heist at the Mission Bank of Montreal, where she worked.

She provided confidential information about the 4th Street S.W. branch to her then-boyfriend Saleem Nasery, Lucas Windsor and Matthew Valdes, including a list of employees who would be present that day, the interior layout of the bank and the various locations where money was stored.

Crown prosecutor Ryan Jenkins said a light sentence was justified because she tried to back out of the robbery, leaving her cellphone in Nasery’s car that day so she couldn’t text him codes she was supposed to provide. She also entered incorrect codes on a safe during the heist.

But Gates said she could’ve done more to thwart the robbery.

“She didn’t call the police, she didn’t even stay home, she was still there. It would be a much stronger argument ... if she had actually taken some positive steps to stop this happening,” he said last October.