PHILIPSBURG--Joan T. Sandy-Forde (42), who together with her husband Neville (54) was found guilty of forging receipts for goods delivered to I Can Foundation and of defrauding funding agency USONA of approximately NAf. 400,000, appealed her sentence at the Joint Court on Thursday.

Sandy-Forde tried to convince the three-judges panel, presided over by Judge P.E. de Kort, to give her a sentence similar to her husband's, who in March 2011 was ordered by the Court of First Instance to perform 180 hours of community service, on top of an eight-month suspended prison sentence with three years' probation.

His wife, by contrast, was sentenced to 10 months, five of which were suspended, with three years' probation.

The Prosecutor's Office holds the woman responsible for being the mastermind of the scheme. She is the managing director of company Personalized Creations N.V., which had submitted the falsified invoices, and at the same time, had also been I Can Foundation's office manager.

Personalized Creations was to provide I Can Foundation with a large quantity of goods for the foundation's youth shelter between April and December 2010, after the shelter burned down.

However, the invoices listed much larger quantities than the company actually delivered. According to attorney-at-law Brenda Brooks, "only" 25 to 30 per cent of the goods had not been delivered.

Instead of delivering the goods, Sandy-Forde had used part of the money to make a deposit in the cash-strapped company's bank account.

USONA has launched a civil procedure against the couple in an effort to reclaim the defrauded money, estimated at NAf. 100,000. Almost a year ago, the Forde's swore to the Judge that they would pay back the full amount, but up until today not a penny had been refunded to USONA, the Solicitor-General stated.

According to attorney Brooks this was not her client's fault, but had been due to the law firm handling USONA's claim not submitting a claim to date.

The order to deliver furniture, air-conditioning and other items to the children's home would have yielded Personalized Creations a regular profit of NAf. 75,000, Sandy-Forde said.

In 2007, Sandy-Forde had been declared bankrupt in a court of law. One year later, she was convicted of embezzling from her then employer, a local hotel, for which she received a suspended sentence with community service, on three years' probation.

The Solicitor-General said Thursday he did not see any reason to deviate from the original sentence.

He said Sandy-Forde had not taken any steps to settle her debts with USONA.

"She stole from the poor and took tax payers' money, which was supposed to be used to provide shelter to young children," he said.

Attorney Brooks said the Prosecutor's case against her client should be declared inadmissible. She also pointed out that her client had already been detained for 65 days, and had overspent her time in police detention by two weeks. The Joint Court will give its decision on February 16.