A 30-year-old woman who tried to use a credit card stolen from a Burnaby home was “enmeshed in a web of circumstantial evidence” from which she could not escape in court, according to a recent B.C. provincial court ruling.
In the early morning of Jan. 4, 2019, Danielle Lisa Marie Levesque walked into a Mac’s Convenience Store in Surrey with two men and tried unsuccessfully to use a TD Visa card.
That card and a number of other items, including a couple other credit cards, a Prada clutch purse and a BMW vehicle, had been stolen during a Burnaby break-in just a few hours earlier.
After identifying Levesque from security footage at the Mac’s, Burnaby RCMP officers began watching her and spotted her a few weeks later coming and going from a house in Surrey.
A search warrant at that house turned up a number of the items stolen during the Burnaby break-in, including credit cards, the Prada clutch and the BMW’s insurance and registration papers.
Police also found numerous other credit, debit and identity cards not in Levesque’s name, as well as a box of blank plastic cards and a credit card embosser.
Levesque was charged with 24 counts related to possession of stolen credit cards and vehicle papers, unlawful possession of identity documents and breach of probation.
She admitted to trying to use the stolen credit card at the Mac’s, but her lawyer, Bobak Movassaghi, argued there wasn’t enough evidence to prove she had “possessed” any of the other stolen items since there was not enough evidence to prove she had been living at the house at the time.
The stolen items had not been in plain view when police searched the house, and Movassaghi argued there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Levesque even knew the items were in the house.
But Crown prosecutor James Henry argued there was enough evidence to show Levesque had had a close relationship with the house: important personal documents of hers had been found in the same bedroom as the stolen items, her fingerprints had been found on the blank plastic cards, and, on the night she had tried to use the stolen credit card, she had been with two men who lived at the house, Dean Harris and Darren Chernoff (the latter had been living at the house with Levesque’s mother).
“The Crown says that the accused is enmeshed in a web of circumstantial evidence from which she cannot escape,” said B.C. provincial court Judge Peder Gulbransen.
In the end, Gulbransen agreed, saying there was “no other reasonable inference to be drawn” from the evidence than that she had unlawfully possessed all the items listed in her charges.
He found Levesque guilty on all 24 counts.
