Victorian Legal Services Board v Angeleri
[2017] VSC 566
•20 September 2017 (written reasons 21 September 2017)
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
COMMON LAW DIVISION
S CI 2017 03736
| VICTORIAN LEGAL SERVICES BOARD | Plaintiff |
| v | |
| DENIS ANGELERI | Defendant |
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JUDGE: | J FORREST J |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne |
DATE OF HEARING: | 20 September 2017 |
DATE OF JUDGMENT: | 20 September 2017 (written reasons 21 September 2017) |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | Victorian Legal Services Board v Angeleri (First revision 22 September 2017) |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2017] VSC 566 |
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LEGAL PRACTITIONERS —Application that practitioner’s name be removed – Professional misconduct —Solicitor convicted of serious crimes involving fraud – Order that practitioners name be removed from the roll – Legal Profession Uniform Law 2014 s 23(1)(b).
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Plaintiff | Ms J Dodds | Victorian Legal Services Board |
| For the Defendant | In person |
HIS HONOUR:
The Victorian Legal Services Board (‘the Board’) seeks an order that the name of the defendant, Denis Angeleri, be removed from the roll of Australian Lawyers maintained by the Supreme Court of Victoria (‘the Supreme Court roll’). The application follows the conviction of Mr Angeleri of multiple counts of conspiracy to defraud, theft and deception. Mr Angeleri was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment.
The principal affidavit in support of the Board’s application is that of Ms Joanna Dodd, solicitor to the Board, who states that Mr Angeleri was admitted to practice in Victoria on 29 February 1988, and on the same day commenced to hold an employee practising certificate. His certificate has taken various forms over the years. He held a principal trust practising certificate from 1 August 1988 to 30 June 2007 and a principal without trust authorisation practising certificate from 1 July 2007 to 3 June 2009.
The Court must now consider whether the degree of Mr Angeleri’s misconduct is sufficient to support his removal from the Supreme Court roll.
The short answer, which I will explain in a moment, is that Mr Angeleri is not a fit and proper person to remain a legal practitioner and his name will be removed from the Supreme Court roll.
In the County Court on 4 May 2015, Mr Angeleri pleaded guilty to the following charges:
(a) two charges of conspiracy to defraud;
(b) one charge of theft;
(c) four charges of obtaining property by deception; and
(d) four charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception.
The offences occurred between 1 January 2003 and 23 January 2009. The charges on the indictment of the conspiracy offences concerned a total of 885 false loans submitted to the National Australia Bank and Adelaide Bank Limited, which were collectively defrauded of $24,729,759. The charges on the deception indictment involved eight occasions on which people were induced to invest a total of $900,000 based on the false representations about the terms and conditions of the investments and the security that would be provided.
Mr Angeleri was sentenced by Judge Lacava, as follows:
(a)Charges 1 and 2 on the conspiracy indictment (conspiracy to defraud) – nine (9) years’ imprisonment;
(b)Charge 3 on the conspiracy indictment (theft) – six (6) years’ imprisonment; and
(c)Charges 1 to 8 on the deception indictment – an aggregate of 5 years’ imprisonment.
His Honour further directed that two years of the sentence imposed on Charge 3 on the conspiracy indictment, and two years of the aggregate sentence imposed on the charges on the deception indictment, cumulate upon the aggregate sentence imposed on Charges 1 and 2 on the conspiracy indictment and upon each other, making a total effective sentence of 13 years’ imprisonment. A minimum period of eight and half years’ imprisonment before being eligible for release on parole was fixed and His Honour declared that seven days pre-sentence detention had been served by Mr Angeleri.
The following extracts from the reasons for sentence of Judge Lacava[1] demonstrate the scale of the fraud perpetrated by Mr Angeleri:
17.The original plan to defraud the NAB in this way was that it was to be a short term arrangement for only so long as AMF became more established. But as time went on and, more and more false loans were processed, they required more and more time to service and more and more money to service the repayments at high interest rates because the money defrauded was ostensibly being borrowed by sub-prime borrowers who borrowed at high rates of interest.
18.The plan was elaborate, sophisticated and well planned and no stone was left unturned to avoid detection either by the banks themselves or by auditors. In this way, the offending proceeded unabated and undetected for nearly seven years. The enormity of the fraud meant that the false loans were monitored on a daily basis by those involved in the fraud including you.
19.The fraud was a gross breach of trust placed upon you as a director of AMF through the complex financing agreements entered into by AMF with both banks. When ABL took over as the principal financier in May 2007, paying out the NAB, nothing was said which would have revealed the fraud that had hitherto progressed to that point against the NAB. So well implemented was the fraud that I have assumed that whatever due diligence that may have been carried out by ABL at that point, did not give a hint of the fraud that you and others had perpetrated.
[1]11 May 2015, [2015] VCC 592.
His Honour’s sentencing remarks continued as follows:
31.On any view, the circumstances of your offending in the charges on the conspiracy indictment, it is a fraud on the banks on a large scale. Your offending has few, if any, redeeming features about it. As a qualified and practising lawyer at the time and company director, your moral culpability in this offending was extremely high. Your behaviour was thoroughly deceptive, dishonest and disgraceful. Your offending is a very serious example of serious offences, towards the top end of the scale in my opinion.
34.This offending was also very serious. The offences extended over four and a half years and each instance was a gross breach of trust placed in you by the hapless investors.
35.I admitted into evidence a number of victim impact statements in a folder. A number of those victims suffer because of what you and others did in the conspiracy offences. They have had their identities used by you and others for the purposes of the false loans. They have suffered because their credit rating has suffered bringing much hardship to them. At first I was somewhat sceptical about such claims but the fact remains your conduct and that of others involved with you has meant that the persons whose identity you used without their knowledge or permission have suffered greatly because of what you did. Other victims were involved in the deception offending. Some have lost everything they had at your hands. Instead of having a comfortable life in retirement, they have lost retirement assets. Their only mistake was that they trusted you and Porcaro and you breached that trust.
44.You have pleaded guilty to the charges and that is in your favour and you are entitled to a reduction in sentence because of that fact and this will be reflected in the sentences that I will shortly pass. By your pleas of guilty, you have saved the time and costs of two trials which may have been a lengthy process and which would have been expensive to run. I accept these could have been large trials which have been avoided in your case because of your guilty pleas. One only has to look at the number of witnesses to be called and the fact the hand-up brief exceeds 90,000 pages to be satisfied about that matter.
59.While deception sentences can vary widely in seriousness, offending that is committed in breach of trust, involving large quantities of money, over an extended period of time normally attracts a significant sentence of imprisonment. All of these featured are present here. As the Chief Judge noted when sentencing Mr O’Brien[2], the monetary value of your offending is greater than anything previously recorded in Victoria, involving as it did a high level of planning, sophistication, endeavour and persistence.
60.This kind of offending calls for a stern sentence because of the need to apply general deterrence and to adequately reflect denunciation for your offending. This kind of offending strikes at the heart of this area of commerce which concerns commercial business borrowing from financial institutions. It almost involves a breach of trust, as here. That is why stern sentences are called for as a deterrent. This kind of fraud is difficult to detect and investigate and such investigations are costly and time consuming. They take up a lot of resources in investigation and prosecution, as had been the case here. At the centre of the crime rests the fact that the loans were false and the borrowers and motor vehicles purportedly finances, non-existent. In the result, the lender has on security to fall back on and the money loaned is invariably lost. In your case, the offending lasted in total over many years. For these reasons, a lengthy term of imprisonment must be imposed on you and your counsel did not submit otherwise.
[2]A co-accused.
Although there is some reference in Ms Dodd’s affidavit to further criminal offending, those charges were adjourned on the basis of Mr Angeleri giving an undertaking to be of good behaviour and I regard that offending as inconsequential.
It is not necessary to say any more about the application – it is patent that Mr Angeleri’s conduct, as set out above and which has resulted in a lengthy period of imprisonment, must result in the removal of his name from the Supreme Court roll. I should add that Mr Angeleri consents to such an order being made.
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