House arrest for former Home Depot worker who stole thousands

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This article was published 17/12/2022 (1151 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 27-year-old Brandon resident will spend the next six months under house arrest after he stole nearly $12,000 from his employer, Home Depot, over a seven-month period.

Braeden Hall attended a Brandon courtroom Thursday afternoon to face the charge of committing fraud over $5,000, with his mother and fiancé appearing alongside him to provide moral support.

Hall became known to the Brandon Police Service in May, when a member of Home Depot’s security team discovered an employee working at the company’s 18th Street North location had been refunding legitimate customer purchases into his own bank account.

“What their security department was able to deduce was that Hall would print a duplicate copy of a customer’s receipt from the month or months prior,” Crown attorney Yaso Mathu said in court Thursday.

“When alone he would then process a refund transaction as part of his service desk duties. But instead of refunding the amount to the customer, he would refund it to his own debit account, which was linked to his Apple watch tap function.”

Hall completed such transactions 69 times between October 2021 and May 2022 — totalling $11,775 — before he was finally caught and fired by Home Depot.

During the investigation, Hall said he was not the only person committing this kind of fraud at Home Depot, modelling his activity after co-workers who are no longer employed by the company.

“I’m not smart enough to come up with this myself,” Hall said Thursday.

In terms of why Hall took part in the scam in the first place, he told the court Thursday that the extra money was meant to help a friend who had fallen on hard times.

However, Hall admitted the illegal transactions continued even after this friend exited his life, a decision he attributes to a family history of addiction that he’s managed to suppress until recently.

“I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. Other than the occasional lottery ticket, I don’t gamble because I’ve tried my best to avoid igniting those addictive tendencies,” Hall said.

“But I found out once you start something and get that feeling, it continued and it spiralled out of control.”

Hall didn’t have a criminal record before this incident, Mathu said, and he became very co-operative with BPS when he was arrested in spring.

Not only did Hall admit his guilt right away, but he began the repayment process with Home Depot by depositing $3,000 to date.

Mathu suggested Hall be given a 12-month conditional sentence order, which would allow him to serve a custodial sentence from home.

Defence lawyer Bob Harrison argued his client should only serve a six-month period of house arrest, given Hall’s genuine show of remorse and his complete lack of criminal involvement up until now.

“At the end of the day, I think we’re dealing with a good person who made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes from time to time,” Harrison said. “He’s paying for it. He’s already paid some restitutions and … I think that any jail sentence should be as short as possible.”

Judge Patrick Sullivan ultimately sided with the defence, ordering Hall to stay confined to his residence for the next six months outside of attending work, medical appointments and other related functions.

Sullivan also imposed a 24-month period of supervised probation on Hall once his conditional sentence order expires.

Hall addressed Sullivan directly before the judge handed down this ruling Thursday, telling him he has no intention of reoffending and getting on the wrong side of the law in the future.

“I couldn’t put my fiancé and my mother through that again,” Hall said.

“A mistake was made and I fell into an old family curse and here I am hoping that this is the step to recovery, not the beginning of a cycle.”

Sullivan concluded Thursday’s proceedings by wishing Hall well on his future endeavours, telling the 27-year-old that he shows a lot of promise for rehabilitation based on his actions since getting busted for fraud.

“You made a mistake and I don’t know what anyone else could have asked of you in the wake of making this mistake other than what you’ve already done,” Sullivan said.

“You have a lot longer way to go to repay that amount, but once that’s done, I think you can put this all behind you.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson