Director of Public Prosecutions v Quinn
[2023] VCC 417
•20 March 2023
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
CR 22-01394
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| LEANNE QUINN |
---
JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE CARMODY |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne |
DATE OF HEARING: | 20 March 2023 |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 20 March 2023 |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Quinn |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2023] VCC 417 |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
---
Subject: CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence
Catchwords: Theft – theft from employer - rolled up charges – quantum of thefts amount to $300,198.80 - serious example of a sustained abuse of a position of trust
Cases Cited: Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169
Sentence:Convicted and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of two years’ imprisonment.
---
APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Director of Public Prosecutions | Mr Z. Petric | Office of Public Prosecutions |
For the Accused | Mr J. Brancato | Gallant Law |
HIS HONOUR:
1Leanne Quinn, on 20 March 2023, that is today, at the Melbourne County Court of Victoria, you pleaded guilty to four charges of theft on the Indictment No.M12722849. Each of the charges of theft are rolled up charges encompassing a number of individual thefts. Each charge of theft on the indictment has a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment.
2You have no criminal history. Your plea was made at the committal mention stage of this prosecution on 5 August 2022.
The circumstances of your offending
3The prosecutor tendered a Summary of Prosecution Opening for Plea dated 1 March 2023, which is Exhibit “A”. The summary was read into the record in the course of the plea hearing.
4The background of your offending is that you were employed by Civic Guides Pty Ltd from 13 October 2014 to 14 October 2019. You were employed as the national coordinator which involved the selling of advertising space in areas described as community maps.
5Your employment was terminated by Civic Guides Pty Ltd when it was established that you had been modifying company invoices and receiving payments from your clients directly into your own bank account. You had also had unauthorised access to your employer's computer system.
6You pleaded guilty to the four charges of theft:
i.Charge 1, that is between 13 November 2016 and 22 December 2016, you stole $5,227.50, which was set out in Schedule A attached to the indictment. There are eight separate events of theft in that charge.
ii.Charge 2, between 10 January 2017 and 21 December 2017, you stole $96,307.05, which was set out in Schedule B attached to the indictment. In total, there are 141 separate events of theft in that charge.
iii.In Charge 3, between 8 January 2018 and 17 December 2018, you stole $73,644.50, which was set out in Schedule C. In total, there were 66 separate events of theft in that charge; and
iv.Charge 4, which was between 16 January 2019 and 28 August 2019, you stole $125,019.75 also set out in Schedule D of the indictment. On that occasion, there were 34 separate events of theft.
7The total quantum of thefts committed by you amounted to $300,198.80.
8Based on the dates of your offending, you generally had holidays from December into early January looking at the pattern of your offending.
9In September 2019, Adam Whitford, company director of Civic Guides Pty Ltd, was informed that there were irregularities on the company computer system. You had been using your computer remotely. You deleted company files and emails from the company servers without explanation. An internal company audit conducted in April 2019 had identified a pattern of deleted and altered documents on the company computer system.
10As a part of Civic Guides audit and investigation, an external company, Qbox Pty Ltd, had been engaged to do the investigation. Qbox was tasked to interrogate the security breaches of the email and file storage system and investigate their information to technology in relation to the suspicious and unauthorised activities. The audit established that there had been multiple logins to other employees' computer stations after business hours including but not limited to the director of the company, Mr Whitford himself. It was apparent that passwords had been compromised and Mr Whitford later examined internal CCTV footage from cameras inside the business premises.
11Qbox examination was able to provide times, dates, login and login attempts on all computers operated by Civic Guides Pty Ltd. It was also able to recover deleted files and emails relevant to unauthorised access to the system.
12Qbox identified in their analysis that most of the recorded or unauthorised activities carried out from an IP address, the IP addresses belonged to a residential internet connection with TPG service provider. Qbox further confirms that this IP address corresponded to Civic Guides email being [email protected], which was your email address.
13The result of audit and internal investigations attributed the following to you:
(a)Banking of cheques made out to Civic Guides into your personal bank account;
(b)Unauthorised use of company debit card for personal transactions;
(c)Unauthorised use of the company toll account for your personal use;
(d)Changing bank details on company invoices for clients to your personal bank accounts;
(e)Providing Civic Guides clients with your personal bank details for payment of their invoices via email;
(f)Using other employees' passwords and logins to alter and/or delete invoices in the company's Xero accounting system;
(g)Using other employees' computers to delete emails that related to payments; and
(h)Deleting any files on the company's Dropbox account to cover up the above items.
14The audit revealed that during the relevant employment period, you had stolen a total of $300,198.80 from the company. You mostly conducted this by modifying company tax invoices by adding your own bank account details including the BSB and account number.
15You had also been depositing cheques made out to Civic Guides into your own personal bank account, account details obtained in relation to the cheque deposits and edited bank account details identified at a Commonwealth bank account in your own name, Leanne Quinn.
16You also created credit notes in the company's account system for invoices which you obtained payments for and altering amounts on those invoices.
17CCTV footage captured attending at the business premises after normal business hours and logging into computers you had no authority to access. It also depicts you conducting overt acts such as placing items in front of the camera to block vision between that camera and the account's computer.
18On 11 October 2019, after your activities were identified, Civic Guides put steps in place to secure data to prevent further destruction of company files. Qbox initiated a password resets for all of the employees of the company as it appeared that there had been numerous unauthorised accesses to employees' files and computers.
19At about the same time, you made numerous attempts to access company files by logging in via compromised passwords of at least nine other employees in the company. Between the dates of 10 October and 14 October 2019, you purged numerous company files and emails including your own company account in an attempt to conceal your own activities.
20On 14 October 2019, after seeking legal advice in an attempt to recover the funds that had been stolen, Mr Whitford confronted you in relation to the unauthorised transactions. You admitted the theft of the company funds and promised to pay the funds back. You provided a copy of your bank statements which identified numerous deposits into your personal bank account.
21On 14 October 2019, you were subsequently dismissed as a result of this offending. You have not paid back any of the money that you had stolen from your employer.
22In the course of the investigation, it was established that you offended over the period of 30 November 2016 to 14 October 2019 through numerous transactions. You had stolen a total of $300,198.80 from your employer, Civic Guides Pty Ltd. On 12 May 2021, you attended Boroondara police station by appointment and exercised your right to make a no-comment record of interview.
Victim impact statement
23A victim impact statement dated 20 March 2023 was prepared by Adam Whitford who is the company director of Civic Guides Pty Ltd, and is Exhibit “B” on the plea.
24Mr Whitford set out how the offending impacted on the small family-run business. One of your fellow employees made the comment, 'She put all of our jobs at risk'. This was stated after your offending was known within the company. The loss of $300,000 in this small business immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic meant the business did not have the expected reserve to sustain the business.
25The other aspects set out in the victim impact statement is the total and absolute breach of trust you committed against your employer’s family and your fellow workers. Your actions also affected the relationship between your former employer and its customers. You have not apologised or expressed any remorse to your former employers.
Your personal circumstances
26You are now 58 years of age. In May, you will be 59. At the time of your offending, you were between the ages of 51 and 54 years old. You are a married woman. You have one adult daughter. Your husband works and resides part-time in New South Wales. He works in the cyber security industry. Your daughter works as a nurse but lives with you in the family home. It was submitted that you found it very difficult to tell your husband and daughter about your offending. You still enjoy their ongoing support.
27You are the eldest child of a family of three daughters. Your elderly parents are both alive and have returned to coastal areas in their final years of retirement. I note that your father and your sisters are here in court to support you.
28Your parents had worked very hard conducting supermarket businesses. You report that you and your sisters were afforded every opportunity from your parents as you grew up. You completed Year 12 and after school obtained a certificate in mortgage broking. In the late 1990s, you owned and operated Aussie Home Loans franchise. In 2004, you closed that business due to the cashflow difficulties within it.
29Since 2004, you have worked in Westpac Bank and St. Georges Bank. After your banking days, you became a personal assistant to the managing partner in a major law firm here in Melbourne. You then moved to your role at Civic Guides in 2014. Since your arrest in May 2021, you have worked as a personal assistant to a partner in DPM Financial Services.
30You have known this day of reckoning has been coming since October 2019 for a period of some three-and-half years. In that time, you have not made restitution to your employer. There has been no explanation about where the money went or what it was spent on.
Sentencing Considerations
31The basic purpose for which a court may impose a sentence are just punishment, deterrence both specific and general, rehabilitation, denunciation of your actions and the protection of the community. In sentencing you, I must have regard to a range of factors such as the seriousness of your offending, your culpability for it and your personal circumstances.
32I am also required to balance the interests of the community denouncing your criminal conduct with the interests of the community seeking to ensure as far as possible that you, as an offender, are rehabilitated and reintegrated into society. I am also required to take into account current sentencing practices in fixing your sentence. That inquiry is directed particularly but not exhaustively to the kinds of sentences imposed in comparable cases and the statistics for those sentences.
33I have considered the statistics and the current sentencing practices mindful that each case must be considered in the light of its own particular circumstances and many of the cases that I have looked at would be distinguishable from your case as indeed they are from one another. Of course, current sentencing practices are only but one factor I have to take into account when fixing your sentence.
34You have pleaded guilty to these charges. The plea of guilty was indicated at an early stage. Your plea does have the utilitarian value of allowing for the orderly and effective administration of justice, there is a certainty of outcome and the resolution of substantive issues raised by your offending. Your plea allows for the preservation of court and police resources to deal with other matters. It also alleviates the Whitford family and other employees from giving evidence in a trial against you.
35Your plea vindicates the public confidence in the legal process set up to protect the community. Your plea is also a clear acknowledgement by you that you accept responsibility from your criminal behaviour on these occasions. Your plea also recognises you are willing to facilitate the course of justice in the community and I accept that your plea of guilty to these charges indicates and demonstrates, and I emphasise this, some, remorse on your part.
36I find that your remorse in this case is limited. In the period between your detection and the date of the plea, you have not made restitution nor have you apologised to the people against whom you have offended. In your efforts to avoid detection, you placed fellow employees at risk of being blamed for your offending by using their login details and the like.
37You have no prior convictions and you are previously a person of good character. I accept that you have helped members of your immediate family. I also take into account those matters when fixing your sentence.
38There has been a three-and-half year delay between becoming aware you have been detected and the day of sentence. In that time, you have managed to get yourself employed as a personal assistant to one of the partners at the firm, DPM Financial Services. This employment followed the period when you were unable to get employment after being sacked at Civic Guides in October 2019. I take into account the delay in finalising this proceeding and in particular the disruption to your rehabilitative pathway of the reengagement in paid employment in fixing your sentence. This factor of delay is in part counterbalanced by the fact that no restitution has been made during the same period of delay.
39Your offending was detected immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic came into full force. The result of the pandemic has been the cause of significant delays in finalisation of criminal trials. Your plea of guilty in 2022 has avoided the necessity of a trial which would have been lengthy and complex. You have been on bail, as I understand it, from your interview with police.
40In Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169 at paragraph 39, the court said as follows:
'For these reasons, we consider that — all other things being equal — a plea of guilty entered during the currency of the COVID-19 pandemic is worthy of greater weight in mitigation than a similar plea entered at a time when the community and the courts are not afflicted by the pandemic's effects. A plea of guilty during the pandemic ordinarily should attract a more pronounced amelioration of sentence than at another time. Although a sentencing judge need not quantify the extent of any ‘discount’, he or she must ensure that the plea of guilty results in a perceptible amelioration of sentence.'
41Your offending is serious. The factors indicative of the seriousness of your offending are as follows:
i.You were in a position of trust and your offending is a gross breach of that trust;
ii.Your offending was consistent and persistent over a three-year period involving no less than 249 separate transactions;
iii.The total of your thefts was $300,198.80;
iv.You used various methods to avoid detection that placed other co-workers in the position of suspicion for your offending or compromising their position; and
v.You have provided no explanation or reason for offending against the family-owned company that was your employer.
42The question of “where is the money?” or “where did it go?” remains unanswered.
43It is difficult to assess your risk of reoffending. You have not provided an explanation for your offending, your counsel clearly submitted there is no underlying mental health, gambling or drug abuse issues in your case. Your offending is a serious example of a sustained abuse of a position of trust.
44Given your background and upbringing, you would understand the pressures and effect of a dishonest person taking funds from a family-owned and operated business. I assess your prospects of rehabilitation as guarded for these reasons.
45Your counsel submitted a combination sentence of imprisonment and a community corrections order was the appropriate sentencing disposition. Such a disposition limits the term of imprisonment to 12 months which is not sufficient punishment in a case such as this.
46The sentencing practices of general and specific deterrence are applicable in your case; the principles of denunciation of your conduct and protection of the community have a lesser role to play in this sentencing process. The principle of rehabilitation can best be satisfied by the imposition of a head sentence with a non-parole period fixed so that you can earn the assistance of the Parole Board upon your release from custody.
47In the circumstances of your offending, where all four charges are founded on the same facts and methods over all of the 249 dishonesty transactions forming four rolled up charges, I have raised with the prosecutor and your counsel the imposition of an aggregate sentence as being the appropriate disposition. Each of them have agreed that that was the appropriate form of sentencing.
48Would you stand please?
49On Charges 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the indictment, you are convicted on each of those charges and sentenced to an aggregate sentence of three years' imprisonment. I fix a non-parole period of two years' imprisonment.
50Pursuant to s6AAA of the Sentencing Act but for your plea of guilty, I would have sentenced you to four years and nine months with a non-parole period of three years and three months.
51I order that you pay $300,198.80 in compensation to Civic Guides Pty Ltd pursuant to s86 of the Sentencing Act.
52COUNSEL: As Your Honour pleases.
53HIS HONOUR: Is there anything else?
54COUNSEL: No, Your Honour.
55HIS HONOUR: Thank you. I think I have signed the compensation order. Thank you. If you could remove the prisoner. Thank you.
56OFFICER: Yes, Your Honour.
57HIS HONOUR: Thank you, gentlemen, for your assistance.
58MR PETRIC: Thank you, Your Honour.
59MR BRANCATO: May it please the court.
‑ ‑ ‑
0