Director of Public Prosecutions v Edwards

[2024] VCC 1648

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

AT MELBOURNE

CRIMINAL DIVISION

Revised
Not  Restricted
Suitable for Publication

Case No. 24-00947

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

REBECCA EDWARDS

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JUDGE:	HER HONOUR JUDGE WILMOTH
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	10 October 2024
DATE OF SENTENCE:	18 October 2024
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Edwards
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2024] VCC 1648

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: Criminal law - sentence   

Catchwords:              Pleas of guilty to two rolled-up charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception – two companies defrauded, one owner - total amount $123,325.06 –– owner/victim felt betrayed – VIS – prior similar offence – on CCO when charged -  gambling addiction – severe chronic depressive disorder – hardship over several years –large debts -  single mother of 13 year old  Whether Verdins applied – moral culpability slightly reduced by reason of combined hardship – prison more onerous than for others  -similar cases -  CCO appropriate.

Sentence:                   2 year CCO

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the DPP	Mr Wilson	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Ms D. Lardner	Victoria Legal Aid

HER HONOUR:

1Rebecca Edwards, you have pleaded guilty to two charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception. Each is a rolled up charge covering multiple instances of deception, over a total period of approximately 11 months.

2I will be imposing a Community Correction Order, without a term of imprisonment, and I will explain my reasons.

The offending

3

In January 2021 you were employed as a bookkeeper at Electrocom Solutions Pty Ltd, an electrical and communication company, the first victim in this case.

Mr Jason Van Hout is the manager of that company, and of Cace Solutions Pty Ltd, the second victim.

4In May 2022 you were also employed part-time at that company, as a bookkeeper.

5Between 15 July 2022 and 21 June 2023, you dishonestly obtained $30,974.32 from Electrocom, which is Charge 1. You did this by two means, by transferring funds into two nominated Westpac Bank accounts in your name, and by making illegitimate purchases on Electrocom's Officeworks business account.

6Between 13 December 2022 and 15 June 2023, you dishonestly obtained $92,350.74 from Cace Solutions, by transferring funds into your nominated Commonwealth Bank account.

7The total amount obtained was $123,325.06.

8On 21 June 2023 Mr Van Hout was reviewing wages to approve and noticed an irregularity regarding your pay, in that your last pay included an additional payment of $1077.75 over and above your usual weekly pay. He then saw that this had occurred regularly. He contacted his accountant and asked him to investigate. Meanwhile Mr Van Hout discovered that the payments had been continuing since February 2023. He conducted similar audits of Cace Solutions' financial records and recognised similar irregularities.

9

He then audited the company credit card statements and his General Manager,

Mr Washington advised him of some unexplained Officeworks purchases. You were questioned about these and said they were purchases for office stationery for both companies. This raised concern because both companies' expenses were meant to be kept separate from each other. Those purchases are the subject of Charge 2.

10On 23 June 2023 Mr Van Hout asked to meet with you. He and Mr Washington met with you and asked you if the wage transactions were fraudulent.  You denied this, but when given further information you made admissions to the payments being fraudulent.

11

You said you would pay the money back when you got a job and pleaded with

Mr Van Hout not to call the police. Your employment was terminated, and you were driven home, and company equipment was collected from your home.

12Further audits revealed that between 1 February 2023 and 21 June 2023 there were 21 payments to your accounts totalling $8,066.20. These are set out in Schedule 1 accompanying Charge 1. These were all unauthorised payments. The first 15 payments were for $100, which meant they were undetected, before they increased in amounts up to $1,098.70.

13The audit of Electrocom's Officeworks online account showed an unusually high amount of purchases, including suspicious purchases of pre-paid credit cards, a total of 69 unauthorised transactions over 13 months, totalling $22, 908.12. Those payments are set on in Schedule 2, accompanying Charge 1.

14You kept these transactions undetected by not including the Officeworks purchases in their monthly creditor invoices, instead inflating the value of the authorised purchases in a single transaction to be approved. Incoming emails from Officeworks were forwarded to your own personal email, and the original ones deleted.

15

Mr Van Hout conducted audits, as already described, with Cace Solutions financial records and discovered a similar pattern. Regular overpayments to your weekly pay were made totalling $4,564.80, over the period 18 May 2023 to

15 June 2023. That is also part of Charge 2, with the details set out in Schedule 3.

16It was later discovered that a large volume of payments were being deposited in a bank account that was found to be yours, between 13 December 2022 and 18 April 2023. These were found to be false invoices, a total of $87,785.94. This is part of Charge 2, set out in Schedule 4.

17The matter was reported to the police and they commenced inquiries, followed by the execution of a search warrant at the Commonwealth bank, which confirmed the details of your bank account, with transaction statements identifying payments from Cace Solutions made into your account.

18You were arrested on 1 November 2023 and interviewed, during which you confirmed a number of details but otherwise chose not to answer questions.

Gravity of offending

19The serious nature of these charges is demonstrated by the maximum penalty being 10 years' imprisonment, and in this case each is a rolled up charge representing many instances of fraud over a protracted period. Although there are two companies which are the victims of the fraud, the deliberate steps you took were during the same period of time, and while you were answerable to the same employer, Mr Van Hout.

20The breach of Mr Van Hout's trust in you was of a serious type.  You were trusted with considerable responsibility and with the opportunities to do what you did. Your actions caused great anxiety to Mr Van Hout, as he described in his Victim Impact Statement, where he said he felt profoundly betrayed by you. He said he had made a great effort to help you both personally and professionally, even driving you home when you were distressed at having no money for food, and lending you money from his personal funds, and arranging a loan from the company.

21He said the stress and anxiety caused to him have had an impact on his ability to function both professionally and personally and have left a lasting mark. A significant financial burden has been placed on the company, including severe pressure in processing the payroll at the time of the disclosures. The breach of trust has also had far-reaching consequences within the organisation.

22Indeed, breach of trust is an aggravating feature which increases the seriousness of the offending. While the amount of money defrauded was a significant amount for these two privately owned companies, in the wider framework of this type of crime it is at the lower end of the range. The breach of trust and the relatively long duration raise that level to mid-range, as Mr Wilson for the prosecution submitted.

23Ms Lardner who appeared on your behalf conceded many of these points, including the premeditation of the offending, but noted the lack of sophistication, so that once your deception was detected its extent was quickly revealed.

24Motivation for offending has some relevance as to seriousness, and in this case your gambling addiction caused you to offend, in that you used the money to cover your debts, rather than out of pure greed. This was not a case of money spent on luxuries, and your financial circumstances are still parlous, as a single mother of a child struggling to repay debts.

25It was also conceded that a further aggravating factor is that you were on a Community Correction Order at the time for similar offending, and you were on bail for other charges which did not proceed. You were convicted in the Magistrates Court on 3 June 2022 for deception charges and placed on an 18 month Community Correction Order with treatment orders, including what was then your current psychological treatment with Dr Georgiou. Your further offending therefore took place while you were facing court and sentenced for the very same type of offending.

Personal background and circumstances

26You are now aged 41 and you were 39 when you commenced this offending.

27Your upbringing and education were unremarkable, indeed you have described your early years as very positive. However, when in your early twenties your grandfather died and your father became very ill, you moved home to help your mother and started going to the pokies then. There you gambled significant amounts, including $18,000 given to you by your parents to buy a car.

28You continued to gamble at the pokies when your marriage was unhappy, spending afternoons doing that. You were able to stop through joining Gamblers Anonymous and what you have called self-exclusion.

29Your daughter was born in 2011 and although you wanted more children this was not possible, and you incurred substantial debt through multiple IVF treatments. These failed courses of treatment caused increasing stress in your marriage.

30A series of misfortunes then began to occur, which your treating psychologist describes as multiple psycho-social stressors.

31You divorced your husband in 2017, a process which incurred further debt. You had sole custody of your daughter, with very little practical or financial help from her father.

32There were tensions with your family of origin, specifically with your sister, and you were sexually assaulted by her husband, your brother-in-law, at a family function, which precipitated an assault upon him by your then-partner. This was witnessed by his two sons who told their mother, and consequently he was prevented from seeing them.

33Your partner became depressed and abusive towards you, followed by the need for intervention orders against him, ending with the termination of the relationship in 2022.

34In 2021 you had attempted suicide, which led you to begin psychological treatment with Dr Georgia Georgiou. Then in 2022 you were convicted of the offences already mentioned, but you were too ashamed to disclose your gambling addiction and so it remained untreated, and it increased.

35Dr Georgiou's opinion is that you suffered from a severe Major Depressive disorder from at least 2017, for which you were prescribed medication.

36In 2023 your daughter was the subject of bullying and was consequently prescribed medication, and she was home-schooled by you for a time. Later that year you were diagnosed with cancer, and you underwent a hysterectomy in August this year.

37You were prescribed increasingly higher doses of anti-depressant medication during these years, and during that time I have already mentioned the suicide attempts in 2020 and 2022. More recently you began drinking alcohol more heavily, leading to a conviction for drink-driving.

38In September 2024 you were assessed by consultant forensic psychologist Associate Professor Rajan Darjee, whose report sets out your history, including that you ceased gambling about a year ago, and in the six months before September you had felt no urge to return to it. You said that the money situation was tough but you are surviving, and you had a new job, which was a fresh start.

39Presently you have debts of $9,000 for the IVF treatment and other debts of about $3,500. You are working full time and you pay $350 per week towards those debts. This leaves you with nothing after living expenses, and you have no savings.

Sentencing issues

40Dr Georgiou expressed the opinion that your multiple stressors and clinical symptoms of distress at the time of each offending, including the current and previous offences, severely hampered your judgment and significantly contributed to your offending.[1]

[1] Report of Dr Georgiou dated 16 may 2024, p.1

41This gives rise to the possible application of the principles in the case of Verdins[2]. The courts have been loath to include a gambling addiction as a mental disorder which enlivens the Verdins principles. It is not necessary to traverse the reasons for that or an analysis of such reasons, as in this case there is copious material to justify considerable leniency when applying the intuitive synthesis aspect of the sentencing discretion.

[2] Verdins v R [2007] VSCA 102

42It might be said, as submitted by Ms Lardner on your behalf, that the Major Depressive Disorder from which you suffered in 2017 when you returned to gambling, was closely linked to the psycho-social stressors at that time, and that may justify a slight reduction in your moral culpability.  That is the view I take.

43As to the possible application of limbs 5 and 6 of Verdins, the need for continuing treatment is clear, and you have good insight into that. Theoretically such treatment is said to be available in prison, but it is well-known that the waiting lists are so long as to place it effectively out of reach for most prisoners. You had not previously disclosed your gambling addiction, as I said before, and so it had remained untreated, but that has changed, and you have demonstrated the necessary insight into dealing with it.

44Going to prison would disrupt this and prevent any further progress and would also prevent you from continuing to repay your debts as you are currently doing. Your daughter, now aged 13, would have to live with her father, who has not played any meaningful part in her upbringing until recently, when she has begun spending every second weekend with him. That would cause you additional anxiety.

45Professor Darjee considers your prospects for rehabilitation are reasonably good, but depend on two issues being addressed -  your gambling and your mental health disorder.  Imprisonment would likely cause a deterioration in your mental health, given your lack of experience of custody, being separated from your daughter and anxiety about her welfare, and the lack of adequate treatment. Prison would therefore be more onerous than for someone without these issues. The deterioration could lead to further offending later.

46Protection of the community would be more likely if you remain in the community and continue to work on your treatment.

47Additional factors in mitigation are your early plea of guilty and your remorse, which you have expressed through counselling and to your mother, who has provided a written reference. It is accepted that you pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity and you are entitled to a discounted sentence for having saved the expense and inconvenience of a trial. That plea is also accepted as an indication of remorse, and the taking of responsibility for your offending.

48General deterrence as a sentencing factor is of significant importance. Fraud perpetrated on an employer is usually difficult to detect, and eventually causes extensive disruption for the victim, not to speak of the cost and sense of betrayal as in this case. However, the reasons for it can be very different, and the need for specific deterrence can differ accordingly. Although you have offended in the same way before, you had not then disclosed your gambling addiction, and since then your circumstances have changed considerably.

49General deterrence is therefore moderately reduced as I have already stated, and specific deterrence has a reduced role.

50I was referred to several cases with some similarity where the offender was dealt with by way of Community Correction Order or a short prison sentence in combination with such an order. This case falls within the parameters of those cases, and for the reasons I have given, it warrants the same type of leniency.

51You have been assessed as suitable for a Community Correction Order, and I make that order.

52Now would you stand please now, Ms Edwards, and I will just explain this.

53The Community Correction Order will cover both charges, and there will be convictions recorded. It will begin today and will last for two years. You must be assessed as to your suitability for mental health treatment, which might involve the monitoring of your continued treatment with your GP and with Dr Georgiou. You must also take part in programs designed to address gambling. You must perform 60 hours of unpaid community work, and any hours spent in treatment can be credited against those hours. It would be helpful if the work hours could be organised to provide the least possible disruption to your employment, although I understand that is not always possible.

54The number of hours is modest, taking into account your employment and your role as a sole parent.

55You must attend the Corrections Office at what is called the Order Administration Hub, which is at 50 Franklin Street, Melbourne, by 4 pm within two working days, so that is by Tuesday 22 October.

56If you had pleaded not guilty to these charges, I would have sentenced you to a three year Community Correction Order with additional hours of community work.

57Any there any other orders or anything else that I have omitted or neglected, first of all, Ms Reardon?

58MS REARDON:  Nothing from the prosecution perspective.

59HER HONOUR:  Thank you.  Now Ms Lardner, would you like to accompany my associate to the dock with the Community Correction Order to be signed.

60MS LARDNER:  Certainly, Your Honour.  I should just clarify one thing, Your Honour.  It was just something that I suppose I forgot to clarify on the last occasion.  The character reference was an older character reference from her mother, certainly she still has the support of her mother.  It was there to provide weight to the psychosocial stressors.  Just I would not want to mislead the court.  I don't believe it was dated and so - - -

61HER HONOUR:  I see, I didn't notice that.

62MS LARDNER:  I just noticed that Your Honour referred to it.  It's something that I should have clarified at the time.

63HER HONOUR:  Thank you very much for that, Ms Lardner.

64MS LARDNER:  Thank you, Your Honour.

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