The Queen v Sumner - [2022] QCA 8

[2022] QCA 8

COURT OF APPEAL

MORRISON JA
MULLINS JA
BOND JA

CA No 213 of 2021
DC No 193 of 2021

THE QUEEN

SUMNER, Jo-Anne Applicant

BRISBANE

THURSDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2022

JUDGMENT

BOND JA: The applicant was an accounts clerk, employed by a private company carrying on business as a hospitality supplier which provided fit outs and other products to hospitality businesses.

Payment to the company's suppliers was effected using an online banking system where disbursement of funds out of the company’s account to its suppliers was made electronically to the suppliers. Transfers out of the company’s account could not occur without the prior authorisation of one of the company’s directors. The applicant was the employee responsible for setting up payment runs by reviewing invoices and inputting into the system the supplier’s account name, BSB, account number and payment amount.

During the period 16 October 2017 to 2 November 2019 the applicant fraudulently obtained 19 transfers from the company bank account to her bank account, totalling $172,924.89.

The applicant’s fraud was effected by the simple expedient of inputting her own personal bank account details in connection with particular proposed payments to known suppliers. She gained the requisite approvals from the company’s director by providing him with reference names for the suppliers and the amounts to be transferred, but without identifying to him the accounts to which the money was to be transferred. He trusted that the account details given to him by the applicant were correct and didn’t check the supplier’s account details before authorising payment.

The applicant’s fraud was discovered once the directors sought to have the office manager undertake an investigation of the accounts to identify why it was that the company was paying too much tax. The office manager identified that one of the suppliers, who would usually be paid only once a month, had been provided with two payments within a week of each other: one for $9,920 and another for $9,812. The office manager sent an email to that supplier in an attempt to rectify what she thought to be a mistaken double payment, and the email was copied to the applicant.

That evening - that is the evening the email was copied to her - the applicant arranged to have a meeting the next morning with the office manager and her husband, who was one of the company’s directors. At that meeting the applicant confessed that she’d been stealing from the company by paying herself when she created payment runs. She stated she needed to set herself up and estimated that she’d taken somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 from the company. She told them that the payment to the supplier which had been the subject of the email had not been a double payment; rather, one of those two payments had been into her own bank account.

That same day the office manager conducted a review of the accounts, searching for transactions in which payments were made to the applicant’s BSB and…

Grounds of appeal

[14] The appellant contends that the primary judge erred in finding that the respondent had discharged the onus of establishing the matters required under the relevant provision.

[15] It was submitted that his Honour failed to give adequate weight to the evidence of the second witness, and that the findings of fact were not reasonably open on the material before the Court.

[16] The respondent, for its part, submits that no error is disclosed, and that the conclusions reached were well within the range of outcomes available to the primary judge.

Consideration

[17] It is convenient to deal first with the question of construction, as the resolution of that issue informs the remaining grounds advanced by the appellant.

[18] For the reasons that follow, we are of the view that the appeal should be allowed in part and the matter remitted for further determination.

Continue reading The Queen v Sumner

Details

AGLC: The Queen v Sumner [2022] QCA 8
Case: [2022] QCA 8
Decision Date: 10 FEBRUARY 2022

CaseChat Overview and Summary

In the case of The Queen v Sumner, the applicant was convicted of fraudulently obtaining money from her employer’s account over a period from 2017 to 2019. The applicant pleaded guilty to one count of fraud as an employee to the value of $100,000 or more. The sentencing judge imposed a sentence of five years imprisonment with a parole eligibility date set at 19 April 2023, which was the date reflecting one-third of the head sentence. The applicant sought leave to appeal against the sentence, contending that it was manifestly excessive.

The legal issue before the court was whether the sentence imposed by the sentencing judge was manifestly excessive. The court was required to determine whether there was any error of principle in the sentencing decision, and whether the sentence imposed was outside the range of sentences that could have been imposed. The applicant did not identify any specific error by the sentencing judge but argued that error should be inferred because the sentence imposed was out of the range of sentences that could have been imposed, and the difference was such that there must have been an error even though it was impossible to identify.

The court found that there was no merit in the submission that error of principle should be inferred in this case. The sentence imposed was in accordance with the submissions made on the applicant’s behalf to the sentencing judge. The court noted that the applicant had not identified sentences imposed in other cases which would justify the conclusion that the disparity between the sentences imposed in those cases and the sentence imposed in this case were such as to warrant the inference that there must have been some error of principle. The court also found that the applicant’s complaints about the setting of the parole eligibility date and the failure to sufficiently reflect the mitigating features particular to her circumstances did not justify the requisite inference, nor did they justify any suggestion that the sentence imposed was unreasonable or plainly unjust. The court concluded that the application for leave to appeal should be dismissed.

The court's order was that the application for leave to appeal is refused.

Orders