Director of Public Prosecutions v Jones

[2018] VCC 1459

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA Revised
(Not) Restricted
Suitable for Publication

AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR 17-02377

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

BRIDGETT JONES

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JUDGE:	HER HONOUR JUDGE GAYNOR
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	7 September 2018
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Jones
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2018] VCC 1459

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:
Catchwords:
Legislation Cited:
Cases Cited:
Sentence:

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Accused	Mr J Miller
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr S Devlin

HER HONOUR:

1Bridgett Jones, you have pleaded guilty before me to three charges of theft and one charge of obtaining financial advantage by deception.  The facts underlying your offending are as follows.  You were employed by a company, Ultro Constructions and Recruitment Pty Ltd, which provided labour hire and recruitment services to the construction sector throughout Australia.  You began working there on 12 January 2016 in the accounts and payroll department of the business.

2You were the sole member within that department and were responsible for accounts payable, receivable, invoicing staff, contractor payroll, and tax management.  You were employed to work 40 hours a week for a gross salary of $65,500 with a net salary of $980 per week, which was set up to be paid into your personal ANZ bank account.

3You had full access to the company's Mind Your Own Business accounting system for bookkeeping, the Astute payroll system for salaries, and contractor payments, and were given access to the company bank accounts via the managing director Matthew Lynch's own personal login.  That company had three bank accounts with Westpac.

4On 21 and 28 November 2016, the company was told by one of the business contractors, a Mr Stephen Rowe, that he had not received payment for his services.  Mr Rowe had a bank account with the Commonwealth Bank which he used when being paid by Ultro Construction and Recruitment.

5An investigation conducted by Mr Lynch revealed that payments to Rowe were being directed into two separate Westpac bank accounts made under the name of STR Plaster, which was not a contractor of Ultro Construction and Recruitment.  An enquiry by the company with Westpac discovered that those two accounts were in your name.

6Charge 1, which is a course of conduct offence of theft, relates to activities by you between 30 May to 14 October 2016, during which time you made 20 separate unauthorised electronic fund transfers purporting to be subcontractor payments to several businesses from the company's bank account to your personal Westpac bank account.  None of them were legitimate payments, and you created false entries in order to allow for those payments to be made.  The total of these 20 unauthorised payments was $34,906.94.

7Charge 2, a second charge of theft based on course of conduct, relates to activities by you between 22 February and 25 November 2016 when you made 31 separate unauthorised electronic funds transfers from the company's business account to your personal Westpac account.  The total of those
31 unauthorised payments was $47,056.57.

8Charge 3, a third charge of theft based on a course of conduct, all related to activities by you between 19 April and 3 June 2016, when you made three separate unauthorised electronic transfers from the company's business account to your personal ANZ bank account, all of them purporting to be payments to a business, RW Plaster.  The total of these three unauthorised payments was $5,383.25.

9The charge of obtaining financial advantage by deception relates to an activity by you on 20 April 2016, when you made a joint application for a Westpac loan for $920,000 in relation to a property in Cheltenham.  In that application, you disclosed a false net monthly income of $8,926, and you used three payslips, purportedly from your then-employer, displaying your annual salary as $152,000 when in fact it was only $65,000.

10Westpac granted the loan and released the funds for settlement on 1 June, in part relying on the false salary disclosure and the salary documents supplied by you.  You used these false payslips to obtain the mortgage, thereby obtaining a financial advantage by deception.

11On 10 February 2016, police executed a search warrant at a Westpac bank in Balaclava, obtaining bank documents for accounts in your name, repeating this exercise on 5 April 2017.  These documents ultimately showed your bank accounts matching transfer amounts from Ultro Construction and Recruitment Pty Ltd bank accounts.

12On 20 April 2017, police executed a search warrant at your home where you were arrested and taken to the St Kilda police station ande interviewed.  During that interview, you told police that it was in fact the company which should be investigated and that the bank transfers were done under a verbal agreement between the general manager and yourself, claiming you received extra payments for covering things up.  You admitted that the bank transfers were disguised as subcontractor payments, but said that this was to avoid GST taxes.  Police investigated those claims made by you but found there was no evidence to support them.

13The charges were issued on 17 May 2017.  There was a filing hearing on
22 May 2017, a committal mention on 3 July, and then a committal was conducted on 21 November 2017.  A trial was listed for 2 July 2018.  The matter resolved on 23 May 2018.

14The maximum penalty for Charges 1 to 3, theft, is ten years' imprisonment. 
The maximum penalty for the charge of obtaining financial advantage by deception is ten years' imprisonment.

15I now turn to your personal circumstances.

16This offending occurred in employment you took up after discovery of large-scale fraud committed by you upon your previous employer, Premium Floors, for whom you worked between 20 October 2014 and December 2015.

17On June 8 2017, I sentenced you to 12 months' imprisonment followed by release on a three-year Community Corrections Order on four charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception and one charge of theft.  You held the position of payroll and accounts assistant with that company, and via various fraudulent activities swindled that company of monies in excess of $240,000.

18At the time of the sentences, I was made aware of the fact that you had outstanding charges relating to theft from an employer, but was told that these were to be contested, and therefore did not form part of any of the sentencing process at the time

19You have a concerning criminal history in this regard.  In 2006, you were placed on a good behaviour bond for theft which involved the fraudulent use of credit card details which you obtained whilst working at Pizza Hut.  In 2007, you were placed on a community-based order for charges relating to an altered payout cheque from the employer in an unfair dismissal case which you increased from $400 to $4,000.  In 2009, you were fined for offending in 2006 relating to the use of stolen credit cards.

20Most concerningly, in July of 2014, you were placed on a suspended sentence for 66 charges of unlawful use of company credit cards issued to you by your employer for whom you were working as a bookkeeper, the sums that you obtained in this fraudulent way amounting to $11,288.00.

21The offending for which I sentenced you in 2017 occurred shortly after you entered into the operational period of that suspended sentence.  Most concerningly, the current offending for which I must sentence you today occurred after your dismissal from Premium Floors and some of it after being interviewed by police in relation to those fraudulent activities on 31 March 2016.  Much of your offending was committed whilst you were on bail for that previous offending.

22You have an unhappy personal history which was outlined in detail by me in my sentencing remarks delivered on 8 June 2017, which I annex to these sentencing remarks.

23In brief, you are 35 years old, the second of three children, who grew up in the Housing Commission area of Shepparton.  Your parents were alcoholics.  Your father was a truck driver who left the family after perpetrating violence upon yourself, your siblings and your mother.  You then lived with your mother whose drinking increased.  She was a rigid and harsh disciplinarian, and the family was dependent on welfare, and experienced significant financial difficulties.

24You have a brother who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. 
You suffered teasing at school and left home at age 15.  You fell pregnant when you were 15, gave birth to and kept that child, and when that child was about a year old you managed to successfully complete your VCE - which is very much to your credit.  You undertook a Diploma in Beauty and Nutrition at a local TAFE college and worked briefly in that capacity, but mostly have been employed in administrative and bookkeeping roles.

25You have had a number of unsuccessful relationships, beginning with a four-year relationship with the father of your son, then a second relationship where you married in 2009, there being one child of that marriage, Dexter.  Both of your children, now aged, as I understand, 18 and 8, have psychological problems.  Your eldest son has anxiety problems and has been dabbling in drugs, and your younger son Dexter underwent assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

26Much was made on the plea of a violent five-year relationship with a man named Claude.  You ended up taking an intervention order against him.  A lot of the offending, your counsel submitted, was due to the emotional and physical abuse and stress you were subjected to.  Indeed your partner, despite the intervention order, visited you in gaol after your imprisonment in July of last year.

27It was concerning that at the time of my sentencing of you in June 2017, that psychological material revealed that you were considering reuniting with that partner, but I understand he has now well and truly exited from your life.

28I received a report in 2017 from psychologist Patrick Newton, and the contents of that report were relied upon by your counsel in this plea.  You have a history of depressive mood disturbance dating back to when you were 20 and when you were first prescribed anti-depressants.

29You have, over the years, abused Valium and temazepam.  You also have a long history of problematic alcohol use, and whilst you have had a small amount of counselling, it has been sporadic and on-and-off and not of sufficient duration, it would seem, to be of any long-term assistance to you.  It seems you were thoroughly addicted to both Valium and temazepam, and that was taken in the context of continued problematic drinking exacerbated, your counsel submitted, by your domestic difficulties with your then-partner.

30Overall, the offending that you engaged in, both in 2017 and continuing into the offending for which I must deal with you today, was used by you to purchase services and items which you could not otherwise afford, such as the attendance by your older son at a private school, the purchase of a car for your mother, various day-to-day activities which you stated frankly to Mr Newtown were something you did because you were "trying to keep up appearances”.  You said:

"I have fallen on my face so many times and I wanted to have a lifestyle so that my friends and family would think I was successful and not struggling.  Even though it wasn't my money, I wanted others to think I was doing well."

31It was Mr Newton's view that your early experiences in life had led you to regard it as a sort of "dog eat dog" activity where if you did not get in first, someone would get in ahead of you, and it was on that basis that you committed this offending.

32In the course of the plea, you gave sworn evidence where you said that until you were placed in gaol, you had never really been faced with the consequences of your actions.  You described gaol as an environment where every moment of every day the consequences of what could occur needed attention, and that apart from anything else, the value of that experience has been a need to continually assess and consider the consequences of your actions.

33You have undertaken a number of courses in gaol.  You hold an important position of trust within the gaol where you are an intermediary between staff and other inmates.

34Your time in gaol has also, you said, been used by you in order to re-connect with your mother from whom you had been estranged, and other old friends.  This required you to undergo the exercise of being entirely honest about your life, to admitting the failures, to admitting that the surface presentation that you had struggled to maintain for so many years was in fact false.  This allowed you to open up, you said, to establish yourself with persons who were truly supportive of you, and who you were confident would continue to be supportive of you once you left prison.

35One of the difficulties for you has been that your elder son in Melbourne had fallen into very bad company once he was removed from the private school you could no longer afford, and had developed an ice habit, and several weeks prior to the hearing of this plea, had attempted suicide.  He has refused to move to Shepparton where his younger brother is housed with relatives and friends, and it is a source of anguish to you that you are not in a position to assist him with his current difficulties.

36It was submitted that totality was the dominant factor to which I should have regard in this sentencing exercise, and it was submitted that I should deal with you by way of a combination sentence, with perhaps a lesser term of imprisonment attached to it, then had been the case in 2017.  I am unable to agree with that submission.

37In my view, had I been presented with a course of offending all in the one hearing involving both your fraudulent activities in relation to Premium Floors, and then your progression to further employment and offending in relation to this employment, I would not have placed you on a combination order.  In my view, I would have sentenced you to something in the realm of four years with a two-year minimum term.

38That offending, given your previous troubling offending which involved offending in 2014 for which you received a suspended sentence, immediately then turning to re-offending throughout your employment with Premium Floors, and then offending in precisely the same way in relation to the next employer even though you were on bail for previous offending, would have led me to view that your prospects of rehabilitation were poor, and that specific deterrence - that is a term of imprisonment which would hopefully deter you from these actions in the future - was appropriate in your case, as was general deterrence.

39In some ways, it is fortunate for you that the two matters have been heard separately.  I am of the view that I should sentence you to a further 12 months' imprisonment, but I am prepared to do that in combination with a Community Corrections Order.  It is my intention that ultimately you will have spent two years in gaol, but on your release, you will be overseen by the community corrections office.

40Through your counsel, I did ask if you would rather be the recipient of a gaol sentence with a minimum term or a recipient of the sentence I had proposed handing down - that being a 12-month sentence combined with a Community Corrections Order for a period of three years, and it was indicated to me you preferred the latter.  And so I will proceed in that way.

41On the first three charges, you are sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment and then to be released on a Community Corrections Order for a period of three years.

42They are offences all arising out of the same offending and period of time, and in my view, are appropriately dealt with on an aggregate basis.

43In relation to Charge 4, you are sentenced to six months' imprisonment, together with a Community Corrections Order which is to begin on the same date as the Corrections Order imposed in relation to the first three terms, which I have the power to do.

44So the total effect of all that sentencing will be you will serve a 12-month term and then be released on a three-year Community Corrections Order.

45I can only place you on that order if you consent to it.  Do you consent?

46OFFENDER:  Yes, Your Honour. 

47HER HONOUR:  Thank you very much.  We will prepare the documentation.  So that is two CCOs.  So it was a second CCO in relation to Charge 4.

48HER HONOUR:  Yes.  Can you stand up, please?  I need to outline the conditions that you will undertake.  The core conditions of the order are this.  Once you are placed on the new order, you must report to the community corrections office with two days of the making of that order when it comes into effect.  That is, within two days of you being released from prison.

49Whilst on that order, you must not commit any offence punishable by imprisonment.  So you do not have to be gaoled for any future offences, but if you are charged with an offence for which theoretically you could be gaoled, such as knocking off a box of matches from Woolworths, that will constitute a breach of this order.  I will bring you back in, and you will be re-sentenced.

50Whilst on the order, you may not leave Victoria without the permission of the community corrections office.  You must not attend upon a community corrections office whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol.  You must inform the community corrections office of any change of address or employment within 48 hours of the making of that change.  You must report to and receive visits from the community corrections office and you must obey all lawful directions of the community corrections office.

51The special conditions are that you will perform 300 hours of unpaid community work whilst on the order.  You will receive treatment for mental health difficulties.  You will receive treatment for drug and alcohol difficulties.  There will be judicial monitoring.  The first date will occur three months after you started the community corrections order, and there will be supervision.  Are you prepared to enter this order?

52OFFENDER:  Yes, Your Honour. 

53HER HONOUR:  Thank you.  Have a seat.  We will just draw up the documentation.  I have to do a s.6AAA declaration, do I not, Mr Devlin?

54MR DEVLIN:  You do, Your Honour.

55HER HONOUR:  Yes.  Pursuant to s.6AAA, I declare that had you not pleaded guilty, I would have sentenced you to a term of imprisonment of two-and-a-half years and order you serve a minimum term of 18 months.

56MR DEVLIN:  And if I can respectfully remind Your Honour, there was one ancillary order, the compensation.

57HER HONOUR:  Yes.  In fact, I have managed not to lose that.

58MR DEVLIN:  Good.

59HER HONOUR:  Which is an enormous effort for me, I have to say.

60MR DEVLIN:  If it cannot be found, I think it has been sent through.

61HER HONOUR:  Maybe I have spoken too soon.  I had it down the stairs. 
Here we are.  That was the compensation order ‑ ‑ ‑ 

62MR DEVLIN:  Yes, Your Honour. 

63HER HONOUR:  ‑ ‑ ‑ in the sum of $87,346.76, which is the totality of the monies that you stole from Ultro Constructions Pty Ltd.

64MR DEVLIN:  Thank you, Your Honour.

65HER HONOUR:  And today is the ‑ ‑ ‑ 

66MR DEVLIN:  Seventh.

67HER HONOUR:  Seventh.  There is that order.  I should add that I had you assessed for this order and you were found suitable.  The assessment conducted by the Office of Corrections concluded that you were a high risk of reoffending, but nevertheless suitable for placement on this order.  I can backdate this.  I should backdate - when was the plea?

68MR MILLER:  29 August.

69HER HONOUR:  29 August.  So the 12 months was up on the seventh - so
I sentenced - I just want to fix this up.  So there should be a number of pre-sentence detention in relation to this matter.  Because the 12 months' imprisonment finished in June of this year, and she remained in custody. 
Did I sentence her to - I thought I sentenced her to 12 months' imprisonment?  It was 15, was it?

70MR DEVLIN:  No, no.  I will check, Your Honour.

71HER HONOUR:  That is right.  There was a suspended sentence that she breached.

72MR DEVLIN:  And that is why there is no pre-sentence detention on ‑ ‑ ‑ 

73HER HONOUR:  All right.  Yes.  That is fair enough.

74MR DEVLIN:  So I think we established ‑ ‑ ‑ 

75HER HONOUR:  In fact, she is going to get about a month's concurrency because of the sentence today.  Yes, all right. 

76Yes, the first judicial monitoring will occur on 4 December 2019 at 9.30, but you will be told that by Corrections.

77What is the date today?

78MR DEVLIN:  Seventh.

79HER HONOUR:  Seventh. 

80We need to stand down.  Sorry.

81(At a later stage.)

82Thank you.  I will just get Ms Jones to sign the order.  Thank you very much. 

83MR MILLER:  Thank you, Your Honour. 

84(At this stage the court proceeded with another matter.)

85HER HONOUR:  Thank you very much.  Ms Jones, you understand all that?

86OFFENDER:  Yes, Your Honour. 

87HER HONOUR:  I know you are receiving a sentence which is a blow to you.  What it is is all the chickens coming home to roost.  Every single one of them.  That is all it is, and that includes the breach of the - you have got the breach of the suspended sentence, you have got the corrections order for this, and the sentence for this, and the sentence for the last one.  And it is just really important.  It is just what happens.

88And it is very much - and I know you are an extremely intelligent woman, but you must understand that when you have just got that - for whatever reason, no matter what you are caught up in, this concerted serious offending that just goes on and on and on, then this is going to be the response.  All right?

89I wish you well.  I hope the rest of your time is in gaol is of assistance to you, and it seems to me, no matter how hard it is, it is of assistance to you in terms of the adjustments that you have to make to your thinking and your operation in the world.  Does that make sense to you?

90OFFENDER:  Yes, Your Honour. 

91HER HONOUR:  I know it is easy for me to say it, but nevertheless it is, I think - that I do think has application, and I do hope you are able to come out and set up a life for you that is satisfactory.  You have certainly got the intelligence and the strength to do that.  I have no doubt.

92OFFENDER:  Thank you. 

93HER HONOUR:  Thank you.  Is that everything

94MR DEVLIN:  That is everything, Your Honour.

95HER HONOUR:  Thank you.  Very well.  Yes, we will adjourn to 9.30 on Monday morning.

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