Director of Public Prosecutions v Andree-Jansz

[2025] VCC 398

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

AT WODONGA

CRIMINAL DIVISION

Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication

CR-24-00012

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

KRISTOPHER ANDREE-JANSZ

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MOGLIA
WHERE HELD:	Wodonga
DATE OF HEARING:	2 April 2025
DATE OF SENTENCE:	2 April 2025
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v ANDREE-JANSZ
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2025] VCC 398

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Subject:Criminal Law – Sentence – guilty plea

Catchwords:              Sentencing – Obtaining Financial Advantage by Deception (Commonwealth) – Moderate to High Gravity of Offending – Moderate to High Moral Culpability – Drug and Gambling Addiction – Low-level sophistication – Falsified Business Activity Statements  - Fraudulent GST Re-Imbursement.

Legislation Cited:      Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic)

Cases Cited:Ensor v R [2022] NSWCCA 278, Noble v R [2018] NSWCCA 253, McCall v R [2011] NSWCCA 34, R v Peterson [2008] QCA 70, DPP (Cth) v Rowson [2007] VSCA 176 and Phillips v DPP (Cth) [2024] VSCA 132.

Sentence:Total effective sentence 4 years and 7 months with a non-parole period of 2 years and 9 months.  

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the DPP	S. Locke	OPP
For Accused	D. Dann KC	Emma Turnbull Lawyers

HIS HONOUR:

1Kristopher Andree-Jansz, you have pleaded guilty to Obtaining a Financial Advantage by Deception and Attempting to Obtain a Financial Advantage by Deception relating to events between 1 March 2021 and 2 February 2022.

Summary of offending

2The agreed basis for your guilty plea is set out in the prosecution opening dated 6 March 2025.

3In Summary, on 28 February 2021, while you were unemployed and receiving JobSeeker payment, you registered a sole trader business in your own name, obtained an ABN for it and registered it for GST with monthly cash reporting obligations. You nominated your own personal bank account to receive any GST refunds based on Business Activity Statements you submitted.

4Between 1 March 2021 and 10 January 2022 you lodged 28 original or amended BAS, despite engaging in no relevant business activity.  As a result of these statements, you obtained GST refunds, so to speak, from the ATO totalling $2,402,258.56 (Charge 1).

5On 10 March 2021 you lodged a revision of the first BAS, namely that for February 2021, seeking a further refund of $195. On 7 January 2022 you lodged a revised BAS for October 2021 for which you had already received $155,555, claiming a further $70,000. Finally, on 2 February 2022 you lodged a BAS for January 2022, claiming $253,499. These claims were not based on any actual business activity. The ATO did not issue you with those refunds on those claims and the total amount you attempted to obtain above that which you did, was $323,694. (Charge 2).

Procedural history

6In January 2022, the ATO commenced a review and audit of your claims. They sent you a notice in February 2022 requiring documents to substantiate the claims. In May 2022, they finalised the audit and raised a debt against you for the total amount that you had obtained.

7On 14 October 2022, you were contacted and invited to participate in an interview, you did not respond, and so no interview took place.

8Police charged you on 5 June 2023 and you were committed for trial at a mention on 10 January 2024, indicating you would plead guilty.

9While waiting for the case to be heard in March 2024, you offered to cooperate with investigators by providing information about your offending and the others involved in it. This caused the delay of your plea hearing up until April 2025.

10You have remained in the community since your initial arrest.

11Your early plea demonstrates, I find, your acceptance of responsibility, your willingness to facilitate the course of justice and it has benefits to the community in avoiding the cost and inconvenience of a trial.

12I accept also that your plea represents genuine remorse.

Personal circumstances

13During your plea hearing you relied on four Exhibits: The report of Gina Cidoni dated 4 May 2024 (Exhibit 1); A letter from Dr Lewis relating to your drug treatment dated 6 July 2024 (Exhibit 2); a letter from Arrow Health dated 4 August 2024 (Exhibit 3); and references from Anthony and Jan Andree-Jansz, Maddison Boyes and Toby Lawrence (Exhibit 4).

14You were born and raised in Broadmeadows with your family. You reported to Ms Cidoni that you no longer have a relationship with your sister, due to your ongoing struggles with addiction and gambling, and that your relationship with your father had changed for the same reasons, but that he remained supportive albeit strict during your times of struggle.

15The update provided by Arrow Health indicates that your relationships with your family have significantly improved since your engagement in their program and I note you now live with your parents again.

16As to your early history, you reported that your grandmother was a primary carer for you in your younger years, noting that your parents often worked long hours. Ultimately, there is no suggestion that your childhood was marred by violence, drug use, or mental illness.

17At the age of about 20, you became homeless and spent 10 years sleeping between your car and friends' couches.

18In 2021 you commenced a relationship with a woman. You both struggled with addiction, and your relationship was, you report, 'tumultuous'. You report that during that relationship you were in and out of prison, and ultimately, the relationship ended in 2023 and an intervention order was sought against you in relation to threats that you had made. Notably, you gave a portion of the money you illegally obtained from the Commonwealth to your partner at that time during the relationship.

19

You attended school until Year 9 when you left at about age 15. School obviously was not for you.  You missed school due to your use of drugs and getting into fights, and that lead to suspensions. I accept, however, that you have recently completed a Certificate IV in Alcohol and Other Drugs, a course through the Victoria University that consisted of 12 months of

full-time study. This is an achievement and a great credit to you.

20Upon leaving school you began an apprenticeship as a plumber and worked in hydraulics. You completed an apprenticeship at age 19 and then maintained consistent skilled work until 2015 when you were 34 or so. Being made redundant from a long-term position though was the context in which you started what became problematic gambling.

21You have not sustained consistent employment in the last 10 years, having received Centrelink benefits but you are now doing casual volunteer work as a support worker through Arrow Health.

22After being released on Bail in another unrelated matter on 19 July 2023, you joined the 90-day Arrow Health inpatient program. This was a residential drug rehabilitation program.  You made considerable strides whilst in that program, 'engrossing [yourself] in various facets of the Arrow Health Program'. Upon completing that 90-days' intensive, you then began the Extended Forensic Day Program with them and have remained an active participant in the Arrow program since. You progress in this regard is significant, and the update provided by Arrow Health (Exhibit 3) is extremely positive.

23As to your psychological health over time, you were assessed by Gina Cidoni who provided a report (Exhibit 1).  She finds that cognitively you have some challenges to your memory and over time decision-making, but now she assesses you as being a person with insight and appropriate remorse for your conduct in the past.  She reports that you willingly acknowledge the effects your conduct in this case has had on the community, and of your other offending.  She assessed your interest in making amends for what you did to be genuine, and I accept these findings and observations.

24You relied on other references, namely from workers who assisted you during your rehabilitation and they described the great contribution that you have made not only to your own life, but since, successfully progressing through their rehab program.

25Your parents, who are in court and support you, have written what amounts to a glowing reference on how you have changed. They speak of the depths to which you had descended during your worst years, but also now and recently of the great work you have achieved over the last two years.  Understandably they express caution and what I take to be fear about any retrograde steps that time in custody might bring to you.

Sentencing issues

26The maximum penalty for each of your charges is 10 years' imprisonment.

27Both charges are 'rolled-up', namely they consist of multiple transactions and this must be reflected in the sentence that I impose, albeit within the ambit of the single maximum penalty applicable to each charge.

28I find the objective gravity of your offending to be moderate to high. You made repeated claims over an extended period, almost a year. Your claims escalated over that time. In that regard I note that for November 2021 you originally claimed $269,888 and then in December, the following month, you revised that claim upwards twice, first by $130,100 and then by a further $120,000.

29The total amount you obtained was very substantial. You were the person making the claims, involving discrete actions each time and at no time were you engaged in any relevant business activity. You were not offending based on need, rather to feed your drug and gambling habits and to enjoy the luxuries such money afforded you.

30I accept, however, that your scam was relatively low level in sophistication, at least in some respects. You used your own name and bank account such that payments were traced directly to you. Apart from the original business being a front only, it was named after you, you did not create multiple fake businesses and you did not create or use fake identities.

31Your addictions to drugs and gambling helps to explain how you got to this position, but they do not reduce the seriousness of your offending, or your responsibility for it. It does, however, distinguish your case from more serious ones where such frauds are connected to organized crime or other serious criminality.

32In those circumstances, I find your moral culpability personally is similarly moderate–high.

33Such a fraud, particularly against the public purse must attract a sentence that deters others from doing so. The Court, in sentencing, must effectively protect the integrity of the revenue system, which provides for the community and all its needs, and relies heavily on self-reporting which is accurate, which your offending has subverted. Offences like yours may well be easy to commit, but they are time-consuming and expensive to detect and prosecute.

34Your sentence must also provide clear denunciation and just punishment of you. I have given weight to each of these sentencing requirements in arriving at the length of your imprisonment term.

35I have taken into account the need to sentence you in a way that is proportionate to the totality of what you did and no more. So, I will make orders to give the effect of substantial concurrency due to the overlapping time periods, their similarity, the interconnection of the attempts to the completed offences and that they were all offences arising from the same circumstances.

36While you have a significant criminal history, it is accepted that you do not have a serious history of theft or other dishonesty offences. However, you have had numerous orders aimed to deal with your addictions and the harms that flow from them, including gaol time.

37You have also shown considerable commitment to your rehabilitation on the other hand over the last two years, which suggests that the penny may finally have dropped. Those efforts have been successful, and you can be proud of the changes that you have made. If not for the seriousness of the offences, those efforts may well have saved you from prison.

38I accept the opinion of Ms Cidoni that you have developed insight. I find that you have, in all the circumstances I have just outlined, reasonable prospects for the future.

39Your sentence is also to be reduced due to your cooperation with the authorities over the past year. You provided information that was assessed as being genuinely given. It included names and details of others who were involved in showing you how to offend in this way and who benefitted from the money you obtained, at least to an extent.

40Ultimately, the value of the information you gave was assessed as being low, but that does not undermine its genuineness. Doing so, that is giving information, puts you are risk, particularly in custody. It also underscores the valuable changes you have made in your own attitudes and behaviour. It furthers the important public need to encourage dishonour among thieves, which must be reflected in the sentence so that others might be motivated to do the same.

41Since the time you were charged in June 2023, at about which time you were also granted bail on unrelated offending to enter residential rehab, you have remained offence-free. You did so while living with the anxiety of a pending prison sentence. I have taken both of these factors into account in favour of leniency.

42Both the prosecutor Ms Locke and your counsel Mr Dann SC submitted that only a term of imprisonment that attracts a non-parole period, that is, a term of more than three years, was warranted in this case. I accept that.

43The prosecutor provided a number of comparative cases to assist me in placing your offending and circumstances in proper context with the other cases and so that I can apply principles of equal justice.

44To that end, I have had regard to the cases of Ensor v R [2022] NSWCCA 278, Noble v R [2018] NSWCCA 253, McCall v R [2011] NSWCCA 34, R v Peterson [2008] QCA 70, DPP (Cth) v Rowson [2007] VSCA 176 and Phillips v DPP (Cth) [2024] VSCA 132.

45The prosecutor fairly conceded that the circumstances in your case was in some respects less serious than those in Rowson, although I note that that sentence on appeal took into account principles of double jeopardy.

46While I have had regard to these cases in considering current sentencing practices, I have not considered myself of course bound by the sentences imposed in them.

47In accordance with the principles in Akoka v R [2017] VSCA 214, I have taken into account the month you spent in lockdown during residential rehab.

48Having considered all of the circumstances, I sentence you as follows:

(a)   On Charge 1, obtaining by deception – four years and four months' imprisonment.

(b)   On Charge 2, attempting to obtain by deception – one year and eight months.

49The sentence on Charge 2 commences today. The sentence imposed on Charge 1 is to commence three months after the commencement of the sentence imposed on Charge 2.

50The total effective sentence is 4 years and 7 months.

51I fix a non-parole period of 2 years and 9 months.

52You have you have served no pre-sentence detention.

53In accordance with s6AAA of the Sentencing Act 1991, but for your plea of guilty, albeit in highly artificial circumstances where I find your plea to have been bound up with the reduction in sentence due to your cooperation, I would have imposed, I indicate, 6 years with a non-parole period of 4 years.

Ancillary orders

54The Commonwealth seeks a reparation order against you in the sum of $2,402,258.56.  Whilst I accept that on the basis of the evidence outlined in the summary that your bank account was impoverished at the time you received your first payment, and that on that basis I could infer that you were not of any or great income having been on Centrelink benefits for some years. On the basis of the material I am not able to make a finding that you have no capacity to pay, albeit I accept it is likely to be limited. In any case, I expect that you will have other options that may be open to you in dealing with an outstanding and an unmeetable debt. 

55Given the protracted nature of your offending and without approaching the reparation order as a punishment, I will nevertheless accede to the Commonwealth application and make that order.

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