Fraudster must repay more than $27,000
A man whose cocaine habit led to a series of frauds for more than a year avoided incarceration thanks to a good work history.
Dustin Joel Coppens, 30, will repay more than $27,000 in $1,000 monthly instalments while serving a conditional sentence in the community for two years less one day.
He will continue the payments until they’re done during the year of probation that will follow the conditional sentence order.
Coppens also pleaded guilty to assaulting his former girlfriend during arguments on different occasions that led to his knocking her to the ground one time, shoving her, shaking her and once pulling her hair to prevent her from exiting her moving car during an argument, ac- cording facts presented by Crown prosecutor Frank Impey at a June 28 sentencing hearing.
The largest fraud occurred April 23, 2011, at Kia Motors, where he wrote a worthless cheque for $22,461. The car company got the car back but it had $5,200 in damage and was depreciated by $1,800.
He wrote a bad cheque for $18,000 for a snowmobile from Proline Motor Sports. By the time the business got it back, it had lost $3,000 of value because of damage and depreciation.
Coppens pulled the same scam at Rally Motor Sports twice in December 2011, trading bad cheques written for $14,464 and $13,024 for two snowmobiles. He sold one of those machines to AGM Auto Brokers for $4,500.
Coppens also persuaded various people to cash bad cheques for him, such as a man who gave him a total of $3,000 on three cheques for amounts totalling $5,500 and a former girlfriend who gave him $500 for one cheque but then waited for a second cheque for $1,800 to clear and thus saved herself from losing that money.
Coppens also deposited worthless cheques totalling $40,650 to a bank over five days in December 2011 and managed to withdraw $5,600 cash and spend $187 with the related debit card.
He pulled a similar scam using a female friend’s account, depositing $1,900 in bad cheques and taking $1,340 in cash.
Another female lost $1,000 on a $1,500 cheque at a different bank.
A man who accepted a $6,500 cheque for $5,000 of merchandise had given him $1,500 in cash, but Coppens never obtained the television, tires and wheel rims he was supposedly buying.
True North RV eventually retrieved the trailer it traded for a $2,113 bad cheque.
Coppens also admitted failing repeatedly to report to his probation officer on a previous sentence and failing to show up for court on other occasions.
Defence lawyer Al Maguire said Coppens is a member of the Painters and Allied Trades Workers union and earns an average of $70,000 per year when he is working. He has a job lined up and will start repaying the debt to a court trust fund in August.
Coppens hasn’t used drugs in three months and is willing to take the addictions treatment that is part of his sentence, Maguire said.
Coppens’ DNA will go into the national data bank and he is prohibited from possessing weapons for 10 years.