Ex-Sea Life Park employee gets 10 years in prison for theft
A former Sea Life Park employee charged with stealing nearly $150,000 while working at the Oahu aquarium has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Maricris Espiritu was sentenced Wednesday after pleading no contest to first-degree theft. She has also been ordered to pay back what she stole.
Prosecutors say Espiritu, who handled the cash register at the park, would pocket the money that guests used to pay for photo packages of themselves swimming with dolphins. The theft occurred between July 2011 and December 2012.
Sea Life Park was alerted to the illegal activity after noticing discrepancies in the amounts of cash receipts when Espiritu worked and when she was off.
Authorities say she was caught stealing on video surveillance.
20 responses to “Ex-Sea Life Park employee gets 10 years in prison for theft”
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Wow! Didn’t she know if you paid off the right people she could have gotten off with probation? Hmmm, Must not have been very well connected.
If Kim was the judge she would have got only probation and could pay the money back in $200/month installments.
ad1—Perfect. That’s justice in Hawaii.
Agree. Why is that a Hawaii charter school principal was convicted of stealing over $150,000 of Hawaii taxpayer money gets only probation and a repayment plan of $200/month while a women stealing $150K from Sea Life Park gets 10 years???
Sorry to say she had no connections.
Didn’t use the Kenoi defense. If I pay it back, I’m not guilty.
Kenoi paid back the money AFTER he was caught. But clearly the lady did not have the phony “charm” of the Big Island mayor.
Why does she go to jail and not get the sweetheart deal of just paying $200 a month?
Perhaps she doesn’t know how to cry “crocodile tears” and say how much she’s LEARNED FROM THIS?
She must have blown all the money instead of socking a little away for bribes.
Well, stealing $150,000 in only a year and a half is pretty egregious, especially since you’re talking in this case about physically handling cash instead of a pure one-shot cyber crime. But maybe the severity of her sentence is due to receiving poor counsel? Notice that no mention is made about who her defense attorney was. This suggests it wasn’t one of our local celebrity-status criminal defense lawyers. If so, then as in most things in life, “You gets what you pays for.”
Maybe she already had a criminal record.
She should have stole from a school instead.
That’s what I thought too. Or that transit employees credit union that has been stolen from by three of its employees.
Our justice system is so ridiculously unfair. Some people get probation and pay the money back at a rate that would take thirty years with no interest. She gets ten years and needs to pay the money back. Unreal !
In an ideal world, every defendant should receive good and competent legal representation. But you know darn well that just isn’t so. If you happen to be financially flush, odds are you’ll get a better legal eagle than a member of the “great unwashed” who can’t even make bail. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.
Wow. How sad. Caught by accounting discrepancies. If you’re a politician, the moral of the story is to doctor the receipts as well.
“My daughter is a good girl, she never would have done that!”.
She got greedy. Without the video this crime would have been difficult to prove. I guess she had no idea they were on to her and conducting surveillance.
It seems really unfair when one gets probation and another 10 years for the same crime. It just proves the justice system and everything else for that matter runs on who you know that has influence. Obviously Ms. Espiritu doesn’t know anyone with influence to get her probation only.