Director of Public Prosecutions v Greer

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication

AT MELBOURNE

CRIMINAL DIVISION

CR-17-00588& 951
Ind C1711142

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

MANAHI GREER

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE TINNEY
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	31 July 2017
DATE OF SENTENCE:	2 August 2017
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Greer
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2017] VCC 1042

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Catchwords: Use false documents, Obtain and attempt to obtain property by deception. On bail at time (for some offences) and on CCO at time (for all offences). Very limited criminal history but relevant chronology. Committed within short space of time of release from prison.

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Crown	Ms E Ruddle	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Mr W Barker	David Barrese & Associates

HIS HONOUR:

Manahi Greer, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of using false documents, six charges of obtaining property by deception as well as two charges of attempting to obtain property by deception. The completed offences all carry a ten year maximum term of imprisonment. The attempts are punishable by a five year maximum. There is also a summary offence of committing an offence whilst on bail. That is punishable by a three month maximum term of imprisonment.
You are 34 years of age and you have a very short criminal history. The 2006 appearance is irrelevant to my task. The 2016 appearance is clearly relevant. The chronology is also of significance in that at the time of committing the offences for which I must pass sentence, you had only recently got out of prison and emerged on a community corrections order. You were therefore on a community corrections order for all of the offending but were also on bail when you committed some of the matters that I am to deal with.
Facts
This matter was opened to me on Monday of this week by Ms Ruddle who appeared on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions. An eight page written opening was marked as Exhibit A on the plea. Your counsel, Mr Barker, told me that this was an agreed opening. I regard it as unnecessary in those circumstances to restate in my reasons the full factual basis of sentencing. I will not go beyond that agreed statement other than to areas that have been clearly flagged on the plea. For instance, there was reference by your counsel to an internet transfer occurring at a point in time when you could not have made it. The prosecutor referred me to the nature of the documents and the items possessed by you upon your arrest on 31 August 2016.
Your counsel, Mr Barker, conceded the seriousness of your conduct. You possessed false documents being a Marine licence, a Medicare card and an ANZ debit card. The licence had your photograph on it but all these cards were in a false name. They were of such a quality as to fool a bank. You used them to open a Bank of Queensland bank account in that false name on 31 August 2016. Charges 2 to 7 relate to your conduct in relation to cheques that were then deposited into that account. The cheques had been fraudulently altered though I am not able to find to the required standard that you were the person who had altered them. The last transaction was on 12 September. Charges 8 and 9 relate to cheques deposited into another false account that had been opened on 21 September. Staff on that occasion became suspicious and the deposits were stopped before reaching the account. Those attempts were in a sum totalling over $130,000. The completed offences related to a touch over $130,000 as well and you withdrew $62,000 of that on various dates. That money was never recovered. Of note is that you were arrested by the police on 31 August 2016 after staff at another bank, the National Australia Bank, held suspicions as to your presentation of a cheque at one of their branches on that day. You were arrested by police and found to be in possession of the false documents that I have earlier described in these reasons, as well as many others. They were seized and you were taken into custody. However, police were not then to know that you had opened up the Bank of Queensland false account earlier that same day. It follows then that you went on to commit aspects (for instance withdrawal of funds) of many of the offences after you had been arrested, charged and bailed on that day. I note though that the summary offence pertains to your commission of Charges 8 and 9 whilst on bail and that is of course what I will sentence you for. But your persisting in dishonest activity in the face of the police arrest on 31 August is obviously disturbing.
In the subsequent police interviews which were conducted as to this offending, you either made a no comment response or you denied the offending. That is by the way in no way an aggravating feature. Of course it is not.
The agreed summary goes into far greater detail than I have gone into. I have only briefly summarised your conduct. It was serious, as indeed is the chronology of offending.
Victim Impact statement
There is no victim impact statement in this case, though obviously there has been a loss and I have been told earlier this morning of the application that exists now in terms of a compensation order to be made in favour of the Bank of Queensland to the tune of $130,209.80. That is the sum that represents that sum lost to the bank essentially, because they ended up bearing the loss in this case in indemnifying the customers. It of course is not suggested that you have received all of that money, I am sure you have not, but undoubtedly it is your conduct that has given rise to that loss. I will deal with the compensation application later in these reasons.
Mitigation
Your counsel Mr Barker raised a number of matters in mitigation and they include:
·Your early guilty plea;
·The presence of some remorse;
·The risk of deportation and the increased burden posed upon your service of imprisonment;
·Your personal background.
He never applied an adjective to describe your prospects of rehabilitation but I took him really as suggesting that you had quite reasonable or good prospects of rehabilitation, though he conceded that the chronology placed before me was undoubtedly relevant to my task.

He made some submissions as to the offending and your individual role. He conceded that the seriousness of the offending warranted a term of imprisonment and one extending beyond your pre-sentence detention period, but he argued that a combination type order might be considered in this case with your eventual future release from prison on to a community corrections order.
Prosecution
The prosecutor Ms Ruddle accepted that there would likely be an increased custodial burden owing to the cancellation of your visa and the risk of deportation. She argued that there was no evidence before me as to the presence of actual remorse or your actual role in this offending other than, of course, that which was disclosed in the summary. Though she accepted that the materials disclosed the involvement of at least one other individual, the actual confined or limited role described on the plea by your counsel was based on your instructions and was not the subject of any evidence placed before me and the Crown argued that this role was inconsistent with the large array of documents and materials found in your possession at the time of the 31 August arrest that is referred to at p.46 of the materials. The Prosecutor argued that specific deterrence was of some importance here and that ultimately it would not be open in the sound exercise of my sentencing discretion to release you on the combined order referred to.
Background
I turn only very briefly to your background before turning to consider these various matters raised on the plea. Your counsel referred to your background in some detail in his excellent written submissions marked as Exhibit 1 on the plea, and he further described it very briefly in oral submissions made to the court.

I am prepared to accept the family background that has been placed before me so I see no need to slavishly restate it now in my reasons. You know your own background. Stated very briefly though, you are now 34 years of age, you were born in New Zealand on 25 August of 1983. You never knew your father, you were instead brought up by your mother and stepfather in Christchurch. It was not a happy setting at all, your stepfather I am told was violent towards you and you were ejected from the family home at the age of 15 and lived in foster care. Your mother and father relocated to Wellington when you were about 17 and you had very limited contact thereafter. As a result of this fragmentation of the family you have two brothers but no real relationship with either. So as to the immediate family, you have no contact at all now as I understand it. I take into account this background as far as I am able to as it was, at least to my way of thinking, a far from ideal start in your life. You at least have a positive relationship with your grandparents who still live in New Zealand but in quite a remote area. You have stayed in contact with them since coming to Australia as a 21 year old. Educationally, you were educated in New Zealand to year 10 level. You went on and did a horticultural course.
You have had a pretty decent employment record, which is unusual for someone sitting where you are sitting. You have worked as a labourer but been injured in the course of that employment. You then worked as a bartender and more recently you have spent a number of years involved in venue management, managing bars and cocktail bars. It was in the course of that employment that you began using speed, cocaine and methamphetamine which evidently was prevalent in the industry though you had earlier had some drug use, using cannabis and LSD in New Zealand when you were younger. There have been periods of abstinence, sometimes significant periods, but your drug use escalated I am told when you stopped work aged 32 or 33. The bar you managed closed down in late 2015 and the thrust of the plea really was that things had gone downhill from that point.
I was told that your work had brought you into contact with people who you learnt were funding their lifestyle by committing frauds and when you finished up at work, you were at some point asked if you were interested in joining them in their activity. Your circumstances were such that you succumbed to the temptation. It is argued by Mr Barker that you were at a low point in your life - these are not the precise words he used but this was the sentiment - you were jobless, you were homeless, with an escalating drug habit and drug debt and really no way to fund it or even the normal day to day to costs of living, so you succumbed to the temptation. You took on this undoubtedly necessary role in this unmistakeably sophisticated criminal enterprise. Your role was obviously critical. Though the scheme was sophisticated and highly organised, the argument advanced by your counsel was that your actual offending was far less sophisticated and was risky in the extreme as you were the person going into the actual bank. You were the person whose face was visible on the footage and to staff. You were the person taking the lion's share of the risk.
You have been in custody since 29 December 2016 and this is the longest that you have spent in a gaol. You have done a course whilst in custody and you are also on a waiting list for another but you are on remand so there have been limited options open to you. There was a single clean urine screen placed before me on the plea as well as two excellent character references from friends and also a letter setting out a work offer.
You have the one relevant prior matter in the criminal history. The earlier 2006 matter has no relevance at all to my task. The 2016 appearance was undoubtedly for relevant offending. I was not told a lot about that, but it involved your being at a bank and endeavouring to obtain money with a false licence and a cheque. The chronology is also a bit of a worry in that you were sent to prison for that and other conduct in June 2016. You received a combined term of one months’ imprisonment and a community corrections order. You got out of custody having served that month in early July of 2016 on a community corrections order and you then went on to commit these offences. Then even after the 31 August arrest, you continued to offend. Mr Barker conceded the relevance of the chronology to the need for specific deterrence but was arguing that the court must not lose sight of your broader history being one of good employment and lack of relevant offending up until 2016. He raised the risk of cancellation of your visa and then the possibility of deportation as increasing your prison burden.
Guilty plea
Turning then to these matters raised on your behalf; I turn firstly to your guilty plea. You have pleaded guilty and you have done that at the earliest stage. You have in this way facilitated the course of justice. You have owned up to your crimes. You have taken responsibility for them and at the earliest stage. Witnesses have been spared the experience of coming to court, and of course the community has been saved the time, the cost and also the effort associated with a contested hearing, either a committal in the Magistrates' Court or a trial up in this court, so I take these various matters into account in your favour. They are clearly mitigatory and must be reflected in the sentence imposed.
Remorse
I turn also now to the issue of remorse. A guilty plea is often but not always indicative of some remorse. Some people who plead guilty have no remorse at all. Your guilty plea was entered at the earliest stage and your counsel was urging me to find the presence of some remorse. That is the way he put it.
The prosecutor raised the issue of the absence of any evidence of actual remorse.
I do have your earliest of pleas. I also have the lack of any lengthy criminal history. Also, I have the letters from your two friends and they comment on your developing insight and the way you are feeling about life at the moment. I am prepared to find that you do have some remorse for your crimes, and so I take the existence of some remorse into account in mitigation, as your counsel urges me to.
Rehabilitation
Your counsel was implicitly arguing that your rehabilitative prospects are really quite decent. He relied upon your age and your very limited history before the courts and your proven track record in the work force. You have only that single relevant prior matter and given your fragmented background when you were a teenager, really the argument was you could have done far, far worse. But I am sure that is right. You had done actually quite well, all things considered, given the disruption of your life when you were that young, a 15-year old. Obviously the drug use has been a problem and your future prospects will very much hinge on your future abstinence from drugs. Mr Barker conceded the significance of the chronology placed before me in that you did not take your chance when one was offered and offended despite the recent past prison experience and the existence of a community corrections order as well as being at one point also on bail.
In reaching judgments as to your risk of re-offence and your prospects of rehabilitation, it is permissible for me to have regard to the deterrent effect already achieved, that is of your being arrested and charged and held in custody already for close to seven months and for whatever period remains ahead for you. It is your first taste of a significant period of imprisonment. These various things will surely go some way to deterring you in the future.
What is your risk of future offending? There is always an aspect of speculation there; for a judge sitting up here trying to make these judgments into the future it is terribly difficult. But other than for this offending and the other offending leading in to your first relevant court appearance, you have not troubled society for very many years and your serious offending occurred in a period where you had seemingly sunk pretty low in your life. Prior to that you had been a contributing member of the community. So as serious as the offending is and as unfortunate and worrying as the chronology is, you are a very long way removed from being a hopeless case. I have no doubt at all that you are eminently reclaimable. Your friends who know you best believe you are and they are prepared to offer you support into the future.
As I say, your counsel did not apply an adjective but I took him as implicitly arguing that you had quite good prospects of rehabilitation, and I have no reason not to accept that that is the position, though of course, as I say, it will hinge on your response to drug treatment. If you cannot abstain, your prospects will plummet.
Risk of deportation
I turn now then to the risk of deportation. Your counsel argues that your visa will be cancelled. Your visa has not to this point been cancelled but as a result of the sentence I am going to pronounce, inevitably you will fail the character test once I have sentenced you for these serious crimes. There will in fact be automatic cancellation as I understand the law.
Your counsel was relying on those cases dealing with the mitigatory weight that may in some cases be given to deportation or the risk of deportation. Those cases include the cases of Guden and the more recent cases of Da Costa Junior, Konamala, Schneider and Nguyen, and they deal with the potential impact of deportation, and the way in which that in some cases can be taken into account by a court. There are two manners in which it might become relevant. Firstly, the hardship of the service of sentence upon the prisoner sentenced, and secondly in considering the loss of opportunity to permanently settle in this country. There are these two different matters that are raised in those authorities. Your counsel made very plain that he was only suggesting that the court could take into account the first matter in mitigation, that is the potential increased custodial burden here owing to the uncertainty. He conceded that it was impossible to know with any certainty what outcome would flow from any attempt to review the cancellation of your visa.
There are Ministerial guidelines in this area. Even after potential reconsideration by the Minister or his delegate, you would likely then have the right of further review to a court or to a tribunal. There would be very many matters considered, including I would hope this is the position, the extent of your connection to this country and no doubt also the lack of connection for a sizeable period in your life to the place where you would in fact be deported.
It is not speculative to conclude that your visa will be cancelled. It will be. There will be automatic cancellation. But that does not lead to the conclusion that you will automatically be deported at the end of your sentence. As I say, you have potentially a number of rights of review of the Minister’s or his delegate’s decision. How can I really know what the Minister or Delegate or ultimately, if it comes to it, a tribunal would do here? I cannot, and it would seem to me at least that there are some very serious issues for the Minister or his delegate or if it comes to it, any tribunal to consider in your case, including, as I have said, the length of time you have had a contributing connection to this country and the long period of time since you had any meaningful connection to the country to which you would be deported. I do not believe it is open to me to treat as a fact your certain or even probable loss of opportunity to permanently settle in this country. It would be no more than a guess and I am not permitted to guess. I am certainly not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that you will be deported and nor does your counsel suggest that I should be so satisfied. Now I have perhaps gone into too much detail here given the concessions made by your counsel, but I trust that my reasons will show that I have considered this matter independent of your counsel’s concession made to me as to the limited way that risk of deportation was relied upon in this case. Your own counsel was not suggesting that it was open for me to have any regard at all to the loss of opportunity to permanently settle here very much for the reasons I have advanced.

I have no doubt at all that this issue of the cancellation of your visa and the uncertainty as to your ongoing position in this country will play upon your mind in the period of the service of any sentence imposed by the court. How could it not? You will serve the sentence with the very serious question framed in your mind as to where you will end up at the end of this sentence. That is an unsettling thing, it cannot be easy and I am confident it will play on your mind and undoubtedly will increase your custodial burden so I take that into account.
Current Sentencing Practices
I do take into account as I am required to current sentencing practices. There is not much point looking at sentencing snapshots for offending, and there is a snapshot here from the Sentencing Advisory Council dealing with obtain property by deception, snapshot No.204 of 2017. But this is an offence that covers a multitude of factual settings and amounts for that matter, and durations. Your counsel referred me to three cases that involved other Judges of this court sentencing other offenders for other crimes. See Thompson [2012] VCC 970, Calabrese [2015] VCC 553 and Hodge [2012] VCC 1267. They are not sentencing precedents. There is not one correct sentence in your case or for that matter in any other case. I received those cases, I think it is fair to say, with little enthusiasm, but I said I would read them and I have. My expectation that they would not greatly assist me was proved correct. There are a myriad of differences in the circumstances of the crimes, the offenders and the chronology of offending. Your chronology of offending is highly problematic.

There is always an inherent limitation in looking at statistical data or other cases, because at the end of the day what I have to do is come back and deal with you for your crimes.

Sentencing purposes

I now move to sentencing purposes in this case, and I think you understand that sentencing is never an easy task, and that is because a court has to take into account a large variety of matters including, of course, the maximum penalties at play. There are a number of sentencing purposes.
The court must punish you, and that much is clear, though the punishment must be just and it must be proportionate to your crimes.
The court must also manifest its denunciation of your offending. Again it is important and I do. This was serious offending, there is no question about that, and you know it.
I must though pay regard also to your prospects of rehabilitation. I accept the submission which I took as suggesting that you have quite good prospects of rehabilitation. I think you do. I must still give some weight though to the need to deter you from offending in the future. The chronology is, as I have said, something of a worry and your counsel correctly conceded that it had a role to play here. As to the offending, it was serious and highly organised criminal offending and you must be deterred from ever contemplating committing this sort of crime in the years ahead. I believe that this purpose can be moderated to some extent given your age, your very brief past criminal history, your past strong employment record and the deterrent effect already achieved to this point in time. I do think you have quite favourable prospects into the future. Specific deterrence is however still a relevant purpose of sentencing given the nature of your crimes and the chronology that I have referred to.

The court also has to consider the weight to be given to community protection. That is another purpose of sentencing, but for the same reasons that I have announced a moment ago, whilst I obviously cannot ignore that purpose, I think it can be moderated in this case.
There is another sentencing purpose of importance in a case such as this and that is the principle of general deterrence. By general deterrence, I am referring to the court’s obligation to send a clear message to other people in the community, like-minded offenders, that offending such as yours will not be tolerated. Other people must be deterred by the sentences imposed by the courts and that is a highly relevant purpose in this case.
Gravity
I have to pay regard to the nature and the gravity of the offending that I am dealing with. That is obvious. Your counsel conceded that this was serious offending. It was. It was not spontaneous. It was highly organised, it was sophisticated, with evidently high quality false documentation being used to open a bank account through which to funnel stolen and altered cheques. I was told by your counsel of you instructions as to your role in this criminality, the suggestion of your role being quite limited in the circumstances. Ms Ruddle on behalf of the Director argued there was no evidence of your position within any hierarchy or the limited nature of your role.
Even if accepting all your counsel told me as to the limits of your role, it would still be serious offending indeed. Your counsel told me that you received something like $20,000 of the $60,000 withdrawn. It is true that your role in attending the banks in person was not particularly sophisticated and you bore a large share of the risk, being the visible player. However, your role was obviously critical to the broader success of this criminal network. You were, even on your own description, an essential cog in a larger machine. On your own account, this was obviously a highly organised criminal business which you were engaged in.
There is some material which the prosecutor referred me to which does not necessarily support your claim as to having such a limited role as disclosed in your instructions to counsel, including the large amount of material found upon you when you were arrested on 31 August. It is very hard for me to find one way or the other what your position was within the hierarchy of this “gang” or how broad the gang was or how many members there were. I am ultimately prepared to act on your account given to counsel, that is of others playing a superior role in terms of obtaining and altering the cheques and making the false identifications but your offending was undoubtedly very serious. You knew what was happening, you were not ignorant of it, you knew of the false identities. You must have provided a photograph for those identities which required your image. You were the person opening the account, you were the person depositing the cheques, you physically withdrew yourself a large sum of money. As I say, even on your own version you received $20,000 in cash. Your acts were not peripheral. They were critical and they were rewarded handsomely enough.
You were acting quite deliberately. There is no suggestion that you were in any way disinhibited or acting impulsively and your criminal conduct related to large quantities of money as you knew, but I accept that it did occur over a relatively brief period of time.
The answer to an assessment of your criminality is not to be found in your claim of getting only a percentage, but your percentage was a very decent one, approximately one third of the funds actually withdrawn by you. Even had it been much less, you were acting in the way that you were in a premeditated manner to achieve the ultimate withdrawal of these large quantities of money. This was undoubtedly serious dishonest offending.
Boulton/combined disposition
Your counsel conceded that and conceded that there was a need for a term of imprisonment here and one extending beyond your pre-sentence detention, but he was arguing that your ultimate release could be provided for by way of release on a community corrections order. The Director of Public Prosecutions took issue with the availability of that disposition.
I have to exercise my own sentencing discretion. I do not ignore arguments placed before me, I pay regard to them, but I then have to reach my own view as to what is appropriate in the individual case.
The Court of Appeal in a case of Basic delivered in May of last year, at least the members in that Appeal, expressed the view that the community corrections order disposition was plainly not having its desired effect. Those members went on to state that in their opinion at least the disposition was being misused and even misunderstood by judges who were passing and constructing sentences almost as a ploy or a device to keep open the community corrections order disposition; that there seemed to be very many cases, a suspicious number, where sentences just below the then maximum two years were imposed simply to allow combination‑type sentences to be selected.
Those members of the Court of Appeal suggested that this approach distorted the whole process of sentencing, that it was not the way that sentencing was meant to take place, and had distracted from a true consideration of the gravity of offending placed before the court. They went on to say that it had led, in their judgment at least, to artificial or compressed prison sentences being imposed to allow a community corrections order to be imposed in combination with a prison term.
The Court of Appeal in that case urged action to be taken by Parliament. Whether in response to those words or not I cannot know, but earlier this year Parliament legislated to restrict the availability of a community corrections order disposition. Some of those amendments do not apply to my task, but some do including those which limit such an order being made in combination with a prison sentence where the prison term to be served into the future is greater than 12 months. See the Sentencing (Community Corrections Order) and Other Acts Amendment Act 2016 and the amended section 44 (1) of the Sentencing Act.
Section 5(4C) of the Sentencing Act prohibits the imposition of a sentence of confinement unless the court concludes that the purposes of sentence cannot be achieved by a community corrections order to which specified conditions are attached. Prison is a disposition of last resort; it always has been.
Your counsel was not suggesting that it was possible for you to avoid imprisonment here but was arguing that you had already done over 200 days in custody and could do more in the lead up to your eventual release from prison on a community corrections order.
I have no doubt at all that your offending demands that you serve a substantial term of imprisonment, far more substantial than you have served to date.
There is no alternative at all other than to impose a term of actual imprisonment upon you. You have already served 216 days in relation to this matter and I have considered whether that is adequate. I do not believe it comes close. I believe that I must impose a sentence which will significantly extend your stay in prison. In those circumstances, whilst one can always see some advantages in release on a community corrections order, it is not the job to select the disposition and then work out how to get there. What I have to do is pay regard to appropriate principles of sentencing.
I do not believe it is open in the exercise of my discretion to admit you to a community corrections order in combination with a term of imprisonment. This offending is just too serious. The sentence needs to adequately reflect general and specific deterrence, denunciation, community protection and punishment. I do not ignore your rehabilitation, but as I have said, your rehabilitation is not the only purpose of sentencing, far from it. I intend to pass an appropriate aggregate sentence and then fix a non‑parole period, and each of those matters will reflect the mitigatory considerations urged upon me.
The Adult Parole Board will then be in a position to assess your needs at around the time of your becoming eligible for release on parole. Whether you will be released on parole or not is something that I am not allowed to even consider. I have no power at all over the Adult Parole Board. For that matter, neither nor you nor I can know at this stage whether you will even have a visa to permit you to remain in the community. Now I cannot factor in the risk of deportation in the judgment that I make as to the actual sentence to be imposed or the fixing of or the length of any non-parole period.
I am not permitted to take the Adult Parole Board’s possible future action into account in any shape or form either. What I have to do is proceed on the basis that you will serve every day of the head sentence which I will soon pronounce.
Totality
I do pay regard, as I must, to the principle of totality of sentence and ensure that the sentence imposed is commensurate with your overall criminality. I have taken a last look to ensure that it does not represent a crushing outcome upon you. Let me deal with the ancillary orders, firstly the compensation.
Compensation
There is application made by the prosecutor for compensation under the provisions of s.86 of the Sentencing Act. She has made enquiries since I saw you earlier this week on the plea and those enquiries have disclosed who in fact is ultimately out of pocket, and as I have made plain earlier in these reasons it was the Bank of Queensland not the various account holders. There was a greater sum on the original order that did not tally up with the charges on the indictment and which I was not prepared to order in the circumstances in the absence of any explanation as to how that greater sum was arrived at. There has been an amendment of that order down to the amount that reflects the total amount of those completed offences in which cheques have gone into accounts and the money has been withdrawn.
As I have said, it is not part of the Crown case that you have withdrawn all of those funds, clearly you have not, and there were some instances, or at least one that I was taken to where you were not even in a position physically to make a withdrawal, but undoubtedly your conduct gives rise to the loss and the loss is what it is, it is the sum of $130,209.80. Mr Barker has not taken issue really with the making of that order. It represents essentially a judgment debt in terms of that lost amount, there is no question that it has been lost and there can really be no question that your conduct is pivotal to that loss, whether you have got the money or not.
So I am prepared to make the order sought under the provisions of s.86 of the Sentencing Act in favour of the Bank of Queensland at the address nominated on the document. I am satisfied that they have suffered loss and that loss is in the quantum of $130,209.80 and I order that sum by way of compensation.
Section 89F
In addition, there are a couple of identity crime certificates that are applied for that pertain to the identities that you were using namely, Anzour Nafash and Todd McLean. There is an application made in relation to each of those people for s.89F identity crime certificates under the provisions of the Sentencing Act. I am satisfied of those matters referred to in those provisions. I am satisfied that it is appropriate to issue this certificate and I order pursuant to s.89F(1) of the Sentencing Act that the identity crime be issued to the particular victim as nominated in each document, that is to Anzhou Nafaz and also to Todd McLean. I have signed those certificates.
464 ZF order
Finally there is a 464ZF application. That is an application that you undergo a forensic procedure. There is no opposition to that order, it is consented to. I am though independently satisfied of the appropriateness of the making of that order. I order pursuant to s.464ZF of the Crimes Act that you undergo a forensic procedure for the taking of a scraping from your mouth in accordance with subdivision 30A of Part 3 of the Crimes Act until a sample of sufficient standard is obtained for placement on the database. I have signed that order. I believe the order is justified owing to the seriousness of your offending and the prior convictions that you possess, the fact that it is by consent, and that I do judge it to be in the public interest.
What this involves, Mr Greer, is because I have authorised only a scraping from your mouth - that does not sound too pleasant, a scraping from your mouth - but it is not as violent as that, it is a swab being run around the inside of your cheek. It is not a difficult business. I have not authorised a blood sample at this point. The authorities can use reasonable force to obtain that mouth scraping. They should not need to; as I say, it is a straightforward business but if they encounter difficulties, and as I say they can use reasonable force to do it, no doubt failing that they could come back before me and make application for a blood sample, which to this point I have not authorised. It is a more invasive thing and I would rather not authorise that if it can be avoided, and I have not authorised it at this stage, but I have signed that order and pronounced it.
Aggregate Sentence
As to sentence, your counsel Mr Barker argued that I could deal with you by way of the imposition of an aggregate sentence rather than imposing individual terms and then pronouncing levels of cumulation and reaching a head sentence in this way. The prosecutor Ms Ruddle conceded that it was so open to pass an aggregate sentence, though it is fair to say she reminded me that there are members of the Court of Appeal who have expressed a preference, sometimes even a strong preference, for judges to pass individual sentences. That may be so but the Legislature has provided for aggregate sentences. It was not a mistake, they have done what they have done, the provision exists within the Act and there are none of the prohibitions to such an approach here, for instance the serious offender provisions or one offence committed on parole. In fact, when I look at the conduct engaged in by you, it seems to me at least there is a very strong unity as between the nine charges on the indictment with a series of offences clearly of the same character.
Now of course it would be open to me to pass nine individual sentences and then to make an order as to which was the most serious and mark that out as the base sentence and then pronounce levels of cumulation upon the base sentence, then also deal with the summary offence. But I really see no need to do that here. I am going to pass an aggregate sentence in the circumstances of this case. I believe it is both open and appropriate to do so in this case.
Stand up please, Mr Greer.
Sentence

On these charges, and I am talking now of the charges on the indictment, so Charges 1 to 9, I am going to convict you and I impose an aggregate sentence of 27 months, that is two years and three months' imprisonment.
On the summary charge of offending on bail I convict and sentence you to seven days' imprisonment and that sentence will be served concurrently with the aggregate sentence that I have imposed. The total effective sentence therefore is the two years and three months or 27 months that I have pronounced.
Non-parole period
I fix a period of 13 months during which you will not be eligible for release on parole.

Section 18

You have been in custody for a period of 216 days. I order that this period of 216 days has already been served by you by way of pre-sentence detention under this sentence. So you have served that and you get credit for that and that declaration is to be entered in the records of the court.
Section 6AAA
I have told you that I have taken into account your earliest of guilty pleas and I have. I have reduced your sentence and I tell you now the dimensions of the reduction. Had you been found guilty of these offences having conducted a trial, I would have imposed a term of three and a half years' imprisonment and I would have fixed a non-parole period of two years and three months. That statement is also entered in the records of the court. Just take a seat for a moment and I will see if there are any other matters that I need to deal with.
HIS HONOUR: Ms Ruddle, Mr Barker, are there any matters that I need to deal with at all, or not?

MS RUDDLE: No, Your Honour.

MR BARKER: No, Your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Mr Barker, are you going to go down and see your client downstairs?

MR BARKER: I will, yes.

HIS HONOUR: Thank you very much. I have signed those formal orders but that completes the matter then. Mr Greer, you will be taken downstairs and

Mr Barker will come down and have a chat to you downstairs.

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[2017] VCC 1042

2 August 2017