Three men who were working for Stationnement de Montréal when they stole toonies and loonies from parking meters were sentenced to prison terms Thursday.
The three were estimated to have stolen nearly $300,000 over 10 months while they gathered money from the city’s solar-powered parking meters.
Quebec Court Judge Pierre Labelle noted each had a different motive for stealing from a system Stationnement de Montréal believed was theft-proof, but each merited a prison term to send a message of dissuasion to others about stealing from employers.
Stationnement de Montréal’s accounting system factored in a tolerance if they did not collect one per cent of revenues calculated by the automated meters.
When the disparity reached four per cent, an investigation was launched.
A camera was installed in a van of two of the men, and they were recorded removing coins from locked boxes they had recovered from meters they had been assigned.
The boxes were to have been opened only upon return at Stationnement de Montréal headquarters.
Richard Bellavance, 57, of Terrebonne, a former city of Montreal blue collar employee whose pay dropped when he was transferred to Stationnement de Montréal, was sentenced to a 10-month prison term.
Jean-Michel Songue, 34, was sentenced to seven months.
Jocelyn Joseph Lefebvre, 51, of St-Alexis-des-Monts, received a two-part sentence. He will be able to serve the first part in the community over the next 12 months. But on Nov. 1, 2019, he will have to report to a detention centre to serve the second part, a 60-day prison term, on weekends.
“We won’t see you again, I’m sure,” Labelle said to Lefebvre at one point while referring to how he had no previous criminal record and was assessed to be a low risk of reoffending in a pre-sentence report.
“In other circumstances maybe, but not here” in court, Lefebvre replied.
This story will be updated