Imagine nearly $50,000 suddenly appearing in your bank account, spending a large chunk of it, and then finding out it was never yours. That is the reality 34-year-old Kamera Belisle faced, and today she was sentenced for it in the High Court.
In March 2024, an error during a Belize Government Lottery transaction resulted in $47,935 wrongly deposited into Belisle's account. Belisle pleaded guilty to dishonestly retaining a wrongful credit. Today, Justice Candace Nanton spared her a prison sentence, placing her on two years' probation with mandatory financial counseling.
Her attorney, Norman Rodriguez, explained what happened at the sentencing today.
Norman Rodriguez, Attorney
"The judge made her orders and the main gist of the sentence is that she was placed on probation after the court weighed her circumstances and the favorable presentation by the community rehabilitation officers, all those who had an opportunity to provide information for the documents the court normally takes into consideration when it's sentencing someone. She was placed on probation for two years, she has to do counseling, she has to report to an officer who will assign her duties which will help her to grow. Included in those orders are that she has to report to that officer and she also has to do some training in how to properly manage money."
"The money was transferred to her account by the virtual complainant and she, as a poor person with lesser abilities, just went ahead and shared some of the monies with her family and an amount was frozen by the FIU when the report was made and the charges were levied against her. The court took into consideration today that the officer who made recommendations, who interviewed her, suggested that the court could apply a suspended sentence which after the court did its deductions, she would have been left with 2 years, but the alternative sentencing guidelines does not address this type of crime. So the court had to forego that suggestion and went ahead with its order for probation."
"She's very fortunate, the court could have opted to sentencing her to prison which, like I said, would have amounted to 2 years thereabout after the court did its deduction."
It is expected that the remaining $20,000 will be unfrozen by the FIU and forwarded to the virtual complainant.
