A Calgary woman who participated in a grandparent scam, stealing thousands of dollars from elderly victims, including three who were in their 90s, should get to serve her sentence at home, lawyers argued Friday.

Alana Love Duncan, 48, pleaded guilty in October to seven counts of fraud over $5,000 for crimes that took place over a four-week period in the summer of 2023.

At a sentencing hearing Friday, Duncan’s role was described by prosecutor Don Couturier as the “in-person courier” in a “sophisticated and predatory” scheme. Police have not charged the others involved in the scam.

In total, Duncan and her partners-in-crime stole $70,000 from the seven victims.

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[–] festus@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

While prison is expensive, you're not accounting that the risk of prison can be effective at disincentivizing future crimes which also have a cost to society. So yeah, confining this scammer in prison is expensive, but if it scares off others from scamming then prison could end up net beneficial.

I will add that I'm not at all against programs trying to rehabilitate criminals, especially as those programs can both help the prisoner and society (by reducing repeat crimes); but I do believe that there is value in making the punishment for crime unpleasant for the criminal, which I don't think house arrest accomplishes.