Jasper man to be sentenced Nov. 24 after pleading guilty to charges

A distraught Jasper man was jailed last Thursday afternoon for stealing money from two local hotels.

Craig David Mumby, a 26-year-old originally from Ontario, admitted to stealing $8,873 from the Lobstick Lodge in the summer of 2004 and also pled guilty to the theft of $1,003 from the Athabasca Hotel earlier this year. 

“I accept responsibility,” Mumby told the court. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” Eyes downcast, the defendant was overcome with emotion as he spoke.

“I deserve what I have coming to me,” he said. “All I want to do is get my life back on track and repay my debts.” Mumby broke down completely as he addressed the gallery, which included his former employers.

“I know I have disappointed and hurt a lot of people and it’s a tough thing for me to live with every day,” he said.

Defence attorney Richard Ireland and provincial Crown Prosectuor David Clifton had presented a joint submission suggesting that Mumby be given a suspended sentence including probation, a plan for repayment of the stolen amounts and treatment for substance abuse.

Mumby was addicted to cocaine at the time of the thefts, according to Ireland, who said his client “simply succumbed” to the need to feed his habit. 

Mumby has since stopped using cocaine, quitting cold turkey around April 15 of this year, Ireland said, adding that to incarcerate the young man would not be the best way to ensure his rehabilitation.

“The individual standing before you is not the same individual, in some sense, as the one who committed the crime,” Ireland told Judge Donald Norheim. 

“Jail time...is not going to resolve the issue he has.”

Norheim disagreed, indicating that he favoured a significant period of incarceration for Mumby.

“The aggravating factor here is that he stole, lost his job, got a new one and stole again,” the judge said. In certain cases, courts have dealt with first-time offenders in theft cases with conditional sentences, Norheim acknowledged, but added that these were only in the case of “model” defendants. 

“His is not the model case,” Norheim said, mentioning the fact that Mumby had stolen from two seperate employers and had yet to repay any of the money he had stolen.

Mumby had been confronted shortly after perpetrating each of the thefts and in each case had admitted to stealing money from the hotels. In the prosecution’s summary of the facts, Clifton said that Mumby had “set up schemes just asking to be detected” in order to steal the money.

While working as a front desk clerk at the Lobstick Lodge, Mumby transferred the contents of several accounts into one before taking the total amount for himself. The theft at the Athabasca involved Mumby double-billing a credit card while he worked as a night auditor.

Norheim asked if Mumby’s employers at the Athabasca Hotel had been aware of the previous theft before hiring him. Darcy Carroll, who had been subpoenaed by the Crown prior to the arrangment of the joint submission, said that he had only become aware of Mumby’s theft from the Lobstick after he had been hired but knew by the time the second offence was committed.

Questioned by  Nordheim, Carroll said that he had been advised by legal counsel that to reveal that he knew of the theft would have been a violation of Mumby’s privacy.

Carroll and two representatives from Mountain Parks Lodges were in the courtroom to support the joint request for probation. Mumby was considered a “bright employee” who had progressed well since arriving in Jasper four years ago, according to the statements made by the Crown.

This support did not convince Nordheim, who expressed doubts about Mumby’s claim to have kicked his cocaine habit.

“I’m highly cynical of that,” said Nordheim. “The chances of you having dealt with an addiction that took you to these depths...it might have happened, but I doubt it.”

Nordheim then had Mumby taken into custody, sending him to the Edmonton Remand Centre until November 24, when he will return to Jasper for sentencing. This development seemed to catch the defendant off guard, and he became emotional again as he said a brief farewell to his sister before being escorted from the court.

The most serious charge that Mumby pled guilty to, that being theft over $5,000, carries with it a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.