A 21-year-old Bar­rack­pore woman, who was fined $600 af­ter ad­mit­ting to mak­ing a false re­port that she had been kid­napped, has been rep­ri­mand­ed and dis­charged by the Court of Ap­peal. 

Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed and Maria Wil­son up­held Lisa Fi­garo’s ap­peal and re­sen­tenced her dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Thurs­day. 

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence in the case, on Jan­u­ary 31, 2020, Fi­garo’s sis­ter went to the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion where she re­port­ed her sis­ter miss­ing. 

A lit­tle over an hour lat­er, Fi­garo went to the sta­tion and claimed that she had been ab­duct­ed. 

Fi­garo claimed that she was at a mall in Ste Madeleine when she was ap­proached by an armed man who en­tered her car and de­mand­ed that she dri­ve to a near­by hard­ware store. 

She claimed that when they ar­rived, he or­dered her to go in­side and pur­chase tie straps and duct tape and she com­plied. 

She al­so claimed that when she re­turned, he used the items to re­strain her in the back seat. She claimed that he drove to a des­o­late lo­ca­tion where he aban­doned her and the car. 

How­ev­er, while be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed by po­lice, Fi­garo ad­mit­ted that she fab­ri­cat­ed the sto­ry, as she had gone to lime with a friend and did not want her boyfriend and fam­i­ly to find out. 

Fi­garo was charged with waste­ful em­ploy­ment of po­lice time and fined af­ter plead­ing guilty dur­ing her first court ap­pear­ance. The max­i­mum penal­ty for the of­fence is a $1,000 fine and six months in prison. 

Re­spond­ing to the ap­peal, As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Nigel Pil­grim ad­mit­ted that the mag­is­trate who presided over Fi­garo’s claim did not fol­low le­gal prece­dents over sen­tenc­ing first-time of­fend­ers with “bright prospects”.

He al­so ad­mit­ted that the mag­is­trate made prej­u­di­cial state­ments about sim­i­lar but un­con­nect­ed cas­es he had presided over in the past. 

The ap­peal pan­el agreed with the po­si­tion, as Mo­hammed ruled that the mag­is­trate failed to con­sid­er that Fi­garo’s at­tor­ney pre­sent­ed ev­i­dence of her be­ing a top stu­dent at her ac­count­ing school. He al­so crit­i­cised the mag­is­trate for his com­ments. 

In re­sen­tenc­ing Fi­garo, the ap­peal pan­el ruled that a rep­ri­mand and dis­charge un­der Sec­tion 71 (1) of the Sum­ma­ry Courts Act was ap­pro­pri­ate con­sid­er­ing her re­morse, clean crim­i­nal record and her age at the time of the of­fence. 

Fi­garo was rep­re­sent­ed by Dane Halls.