R v Issac

[2023] NSWDC 207

District Court

New South Wales

• Amendment notes

Medium Neutral Citation:	R v Issac [2023] NSWDC 207
Hearing dates:	2 May and 2 June 2023
Decision date:	16 June 2023
Jurisdiction:	Criminal
Before:	Colefax SC DCJ
Decision:	Term of imprisonment of 3 years to be partially suspended after a period of 16 months
Catchwords:	CRIME - SENTENCE - dishonestly obtain a financial benefit by deception.
Legislation Cited:	Criminal Code (C'th) s134.2(1); Crimes Act 1914 (C'th) s20(1)(b).
Cases Cited:	R v Hurst; ex parte Director of Public Prosecutions (C’th) [2005] QCA 25; Totaan v R [2022] NSWCCA 75
Category:	Sentence
Parties:	Rex (Crown) Janina Issac (Offender)
Representation:	Mr Dutaillis, later Ms Burton (Commonwealth DPP) Mr Kryako (Solicitor), later Mr James AM KC (for the offender)
File Number(s):	2022/8797
Publication restriction:	Nil

Judgment

1. Janina Issac, you appear for sentence today in relation to one offence, i.e., dishonestly obtaining a financial benefit (from the Commonwealth of Australia) by deception.

2. This involved you, between 20 August 2013 and 3 December 2020 (i.e., a period in excess of seven years), engaging in a continuing deception whereby you repeatedly, and on very many occasions (the details of which are set out in the statement of agreed facts), falsely representing to Services Australia that you had separated from your husband (Mr Audisho) and that, as a result, you were not a member of a couple.

3. You made these false representations in the context of applying for, and receiving, payments of Parenting Payment Single (“PPS”).

4. PPS is an income support payment by the Commonwealth government for sole parents. It is payable to persons with dependent children until the date of the youngest child’s 18^th birthday. A parent is eligible for PPS only if that parent is not a member of a couple.

5. In the period that you received PPS, you gave birth to three children in June 2013, March 2017 and April 2019.

6. And throughout the totality of the time that you received PPS for those children, you were a member of a couple – i.e., you were living with your husband, the father of those children.

7. You submitted the first of very many false claims to Services Australia on 20 August 2013. Your offending only stopped because on 10 August 2020 your fraudulent activities came to the attention of the authorities when another Commonwealth agency disclosed the relationship between you and your husband to Services Australia.

8. I pause to observe that, as a result of that disclosure, a search warrant was executed at your residential premises on 3 December 2020 - the residential premises you shared with your husband and three young children. I shall turn to the significance of that date later in these remarks.

9. A Court Attendance Notice was ultimately issued on 6 December 2021 – to which you pleaded guilty at an early opportunity.

10. You were committed for sentence to this Court by the Local Court on 28 October 2022.

11. The total amount that you fraudulently received was $170,787.11. All of the payments…