Judge rejects career criminal’s promise to change his ways

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This article was published 19/03/2025 (206 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During his adult life, 42-year-old career criminal and fraudster Travis Clay Funk has amassed roughly 100 criminal convictions.

When he appeared in a Winnipeg court Wednesday to be sentenced for his latest crime spree, the father-to-be promised he wants to finally turn his life around.

“I know I’ve made some horrible mistakes now and in the past,” said Funk, appearing via video from the Winnipeg Remand Centre. “I have a baby on the way and I need to do better.”

Funk pleaded guilty to more than a dozen counts of making and passing counterfeit U.S. currency and being in possession of stolen vehicles during a two-month crime spree last fall.

Provincial court Judge Keith Eyrikson greeted Funk’s pledge to change with skepticism.

“I suspect you’ve been given lectures countless times by judges about changing your life otherwise you are going to spend significant portions of your life under house arrest or in jail,” said Eyrikson, who sentenced Funk to 30 months in prison. “Despite your protestations earlier, it doesn’t seem to have worked.”

Jessica Crouch-Sinclair, Funk’s co-accused and mother of his unborn child, sat in the front row of the court gallery as Funk smiled on video and made heart signs with his hands prior to the start of court.

Crouch-Sinclair pleaded guilty to a handful of counterfeiting-related charges and was sentenced by Eyrikson last week to 18 months of house arrest.

Funk, who is from Saskatchewan, and Crouch-Sinclair were arrested last November after Funk, sometimes in the company of Crouch-Sinclair, used counterfeit currency at more than a dozen gas bars and grocery, liquor and hardware stores.

“He was hitting up these places on pretty much a daily basis,” Crown attorney Jocelyne Ritchot told Eyrikson.

City police had identified the couple as suspects in the crime wave when they received a tip they were likely staying at the home of Crouch Sinclair’s father, Ritchot said.

Police set up surveillance outside the Portland Avenue home and arrested the couple after they walked outside to the rear lane.

Funk tried to flee but was captured after short foot chase. A search of his backpack yielded an envelope containing counterfeit U.S. currency as well as genuine currency with serial numbers that matched the bogus bills, and an ink cartridge “which we say was being used in the production of the currency,” Ritchot said.

Funk was also found with three small bags of methamphetamine.

Crouch-Sinclair was carrying a bag containing counterfeit U.S. currency “in various forms of completion,” Ritchot said.

At the time, Funk was the subject of three arrest warrants and was in violation of a Saskatchewan-imposed conditional sentence order — the sixth he had received in the past 20 years.

Defence lawyer Emilie Cook said Funk’s crimes were driven by his drug addiction.

Cook and Ritchot jointly recommended the 30-month sentence in a plea bargain that circumvented a long and complex trial, court was told.

Had Funk been convicted after trial, he would be looking at a sentence of up to six years, Eyrikson said.

“You are, in a word, a menace, an absolute menace,” Eyrikson said.

“I hear constantly and at length about poor shopkeepers working in the retail industry who are subjected to behaviour like this… Frankly, it is shameful what you have done.”

Funk made headlines in 2016 after he escaped from jail in Saskatoon and was arrested weeks later in British Columbia.

Tthe Saskatoon Star Phoenix reported Funk had climbed over a fence at the jail and jumped into a waiting SUV.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca