R v Sappideen

[2018] NSWDC 238

District Court

New South Wales

• Amendment notes

Medium Neutral Citation:	R v Sappideen [2018] NSWDC 238
Hearing dates:	02 February 2018
Date of orders:	02 February 2018
Decision date:	02 February 2018
Jurisdiction:	Criminal
Before:	M L Williams SC DCJ
Decision:	Full time custodial sentence of 12 years imposed with a non-parole period of 8 years. See [34].
Catchwords:	SENTENCING — Offences – Dishonestly obtain financial advantage by deception SENTENCING — Relevant factors on sentence — Multiple offences — Aggregate sentences SENTENCING — Penalties — Imprisonment
Legislation Cited:	Crimes Act 1900 Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999
Cases Cited:	Cahyadi v The Queen (2007) 168 A Crim R 41 R v XX (2009) 195 A Crim R 38 Johnson v The Queen (2004) ALJR 616 Cowling v R [2015] NSWCCA 213 R v Qutami (2001) 127 A Crim R 369
Category:	Sentence
Parties:	The Crown Ishan Seenar Sappideen
Representation:	Mr I Lloyd QC (Counsel for the Offender)   Ms P Smith (Crown Advocate)
File Number(s):	2014/96392; 2014/351208; 2015/177272; 2015/213082

Judgment

1. Ishan Sappideen defrauded his friends of about $4.6 million of which $3.6 million approximately remains missing and there is no evidence at all as to where it has gone or what he did with it. He is 37 years of age, and as Mr Lloyd QC accurately summarised his offending in submissions, he was a big noter who showed false trappings of wealth to people and befriended them, got them to invest large amounts of money and then told lies as to why their investments could not be repaid.

2. Some of the offences before the court today were committed while he was on parole and some were committed while he was on bail having been arrested for the earlier offences for which he stands for sentence today. When I say “on parole”, I refer to the fact that on 8 July 2005 His Honour Judge Bell imposed a sentence of eight years imprisonment with a five year and six months non-parole period to date from 12 May 2004 for a series of fraudulent offences, mostly of much less serious amounts of money than involved in the present case. At that time Bell DCJ said

“At the outset I stress that it is difficult to fully appreciate this young man’s confident presentation and his ability to express himself without actually seeing him. His skills in communication and presentation are of an order that would be the envy of many members of the legal procession”

3. His Honour went on to say,

“His conduct involved the presentation of himself as a person of importance. He utilised that presentation to obtain cash from his victims. The cash he obtained was in large measure spent by maintaining a lavish lifestyle. He then fraudulently dealt with funds by seeking to take them form the accounts of some of his victims and depositing them into account of other victims. His conduct raised much false expectation of profit in his victims, and that expectation was not only not realised but…