Bread roll swindler gets 6 yrs

(CNS): A 47-year-old baker has been sentenced to six years in prison over a two year swindle in which he defrauded a supermarket and his business partner in a massive bread roll con of over $300,000. Dave Bryan, who was found guilty of the fraud, was handed a five year sentence for the con perpetrated on Fosters and further 12 months for a loan he attempted to fraudulently obtain from the CIDB by forging his partner’s signature. The judge ordered that sentence to run consecutively and gave Bryan a further 12 months over a guilty plea for a charge of cheque kiting to run concurrently with the other terms.

As he read his ruling to the court, Justice Charles Quin said that there were few mitigating factors in Bryan’s favour but several aggravating ones because so many other people, including his business partner at the Cayman Bakery, the employees there, employees at Fosters and his own step daughter, had suffered as a result of the convicted man’s crime.

He described the story of Bryan’s offences as a “shocking picture of deception” and added that it was harder to imagine “a more cynical and protracted” crime in which he callously breached the trust that so many people had in him.

The judge pointed to Bryan’s attempts, once the fraud came to light, to blame other people, which resulted in a manager at Foster’s losing his job after 27 years and the delivery man at the bakery business being deported back to Jamaica after just a few weeks, having moved his life to Cayman.

Justice Quin said that Bernie Bush, the partner in the Cayman Baker with Bryan, had not only narrowly escaped bankruptcy but lost the bakery business, which also resulted in the staff there all losing their jobs. Bryan showed “a callous disregard for other people’s lives” with the crime and caused untold harm to the people involved, the judge wrote in his ruling.

The defendant had prevailed on the good nature of staff at Fosters, who had trusted him and unwittingly assisted Bryan in the perpetration of the fraud, in which he had falsified invoices and documents relating to bread, cinnamon rolls and Easter buns, Justice Quin added.

Over a two year period the investigation found that Bryan had delivered only a fraction of the goods for which the bakery invoiced the supermarket and which in turn Foster’s had paid.

Bryan himself had also suffered in the wake of his massive fraud that spanned a two year period, which was noted by the judge. Bryan’s marriage broke down shortly after his arrest, his step daughter had to leave university because she had been dependent on Bryan for funding her studies, his son was unable to graduate, he had lost the family home as he was unable to pay the mortgage after he was remanded in custody and his pending application for PR was doomed.

However, the judge found that in light of the economy, the sentence for a crime involving a breach of trust as had occurred in this case had to be a deterrent and noted the numerous aggravating factors of the case, as he handed down the six year term of imprisonment.

Bryan's attorney, Marseta Facey-Clarke, said in the wake of the ruling that she would be appealing both the conviction and the sentence on behalf of her client.

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