An Abbotsford man who misappropriated $36,000 from a Mission gun shop in 2015 has been sentenced to a nine-month jail term to be followed by 18 months of probation.
Tyson Gamberg, 26, was sentenced Wednesday in Abbotsford provincial court on a charge of theft over $5,000.
Court documents indicate that Gamberg was employed as a shipper at High Calibre Services Corp. on First Avenue in Mission from June 2014 to November 2015.
The business sells firearms, accessories and ammunition both in store and online.
Gamberg also handled online sales, and most often worked alone and unsupervised, according to the documents.
As part of his duties, he was given a four-digit code to process refunds. The refunds were done using either a stationary or a remote electronic payment processing terminal.
The court documents state that Gamberg would often take the remote terminal and keep it at his work space in the shipping area.
In November 2015, Elavon Inc., a company that processes and monitors credit card and debit transactions for High Calibre, noticed several suspicious refunds from the store that did not match to previous sales.
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Elavon associated the suspicious refunds to Gamberg’s credit and debit cards and found a total of 150 questionable transactions between the two cards, all in the first three months of 2015.
Another 22 illegitimate refunds were later found between the two accounts for a total of 172 transactions amounting to $36,000 in misappropriated funds, the court documents state.
Gamberg quit his job on Nov. 19, 2015, after he was confronted by his boss, and later notified bank officials and the police, saying he was concerned that someone else had been using his credit and debit accounts.
Gamberg testified at his trial that he was not aware of the fraudulent refunds from High Calibre going into his two bank accounts and that he was not responsible for processing them.
But Judge Gregory Brown said Gamberg was not credible on the witness stand, and he was convicted in March of this year.
Gamberg then attempted to have the case tossed out, saying that he had not been tried in a reasonable time.
But the judge denied that application, saying that much of the delay was on the defence side, including adjournments due to Gamberg not initially having a lawyer in place.
