‘Departure will reduce criminal element’

A FRENCHMAN responsible for a string of dishonesty offences in Queenstown has been called a ‘‘thoroughly dishonest person’’ by a judge.

As Judge David Ruth sentenced PierreMarie Julien Giffard to 19 months’ prison for his offending in the resort town last year, he told the 31yearold the community would be pleased to hear he would be deported upon his release.

‘‘Your departure will reduce the criminal element in this town by one.’’

Summarising the facts of the case in the Queenstown District Court hearing on Tuesday, prosecuting Sergeant Ian Collin said Giffard asked several people for money in early August to pay for bond and rent for a rental property he had secured.

However, when the rental house fell through, he did not return their money.

He asked others for loans that month, promising to repay them by August 28, but did not do so. On September 20, he went into the office of the central Queenstown bar where he worked and stole $1400 in cash from the safe. He resumed his offending on November 2, when he asked a flatmate for a $200 loan to pay the cost of surgery for a ‘‘tapeworm infection’’.

Two days after getting the money, he suddenly moved out of the house without paying it back. A week later, he began squatting at an unoccupied holiday home in Lake Ave, Frankton, sleeping in a caravan parked on its driveway. While there, he broke into the house and stole a television. When the homeowner and his wife arrived on November 16, they found Giffard in the house. He told them he was ‘‘sleeping rough’’ and had only gone in to charge his phone.

He initially told police he had not stolen the television, and claimed he was given permission to stay in the caravan by a man who had been doing security checks at the house.

He later admitted six charges of obtaining money by deception — totalling $3430 — two charges of burglary and one of interfering with a caravan.

Defence counsel Tanya Surrey said the offending was motivated by ‘‘homelessness and financial deprivation’’.

She asked for a noncustodial sentence, at the end of which the defendant would be deported. He had spent the past six months in prison because he did not have a visa to stay in the country.

Sgt Collin said Giffard’s claims of financial woes did not hold up because he had a job for much of the period of offending.

He had abused his position of trust with his employer, and fabricated a story about surgery for a nonexistent medical condition. There was an ‘‘element of distastefulness’’ to his offending because it was clear he never intended to pay his victims back. Judge Ruth said the defendant told his presentence report writer he had ‘‘lost his mind’’ after a relationship breakdown.

Noting his clean criminal history in New Zealand and France, he told him he had ‘‘certainly taken a large leap into criminal offending’’.

The defendant had ‘‘preyed on the good nature and altruism’’ of his victims.

‘‘You never intended to pay anybody a single cent.’’