DPP v Vu [2025] VCC 956

Recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime between 5 May 2020 - 27 Feb 2021 (Rolled-Up)

s.194(3) of the Crimes Act 1958

1. You were originally charged with a significant number of serious offences, which were withdrawn after you accepted an indication at a sentence indication hearing (SIH).[1]
2. The sentence indication hearing was to be heard on 20 June 2025 but had to be adjourned to 23 June as no interpreter was available. The indication proceeded on that later date, where it was submitted on your behalf that a modest term of imprisonment, not exceeding time served, that is to say around three years, was the appropriate penalty.
3. For reasons I shall come to, I indicated on 23 June 2025 that should you plead guilty to the charges I just mentioned, in the terms alleged, then I would sentence you to not more than four years four months' imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years.[2]
4. On 26 June 2025, you indicated that you would not accept that indication and at that time a number of consequential orders were made with respect to setting this matter down for trial. The import of those orders is significant.
5. Later in the evening of that very same day, your legal representatives asked for the matter to be urgently relisted on the following day as you wished to avail yourself of the indication after all.
6. Given that you had not accepted the sentence indication at the first opportunity under s209 of the Criminal Procedure Act, it was necessary to give a second one and this was done with the agreement of the parties. Put simply, after the matter was set down for trial on the preceding day, the value of a plea of guilty came into sharper focus. A decision to plead guilty in those circumstances answered the test in s208(3A) as these circumstances were likely to materially affect the indication I gave.
7. I indicated on 27 June 2025 that if you plead guilty, I would not exceed the same indication I gave the previous day, noting that it may well be lower upon further reflection and consideration by me.
8. You accepted that indication and were arraigned immediately on an indictment reflecting the above charges. You pleaded guilty. The matter was set down for formal plea and sentence today, being 4 July 2025.
9. I am going to sentence you to four years and two months' imprisonment and I am going to set a non-parole period of three years. The days you have spent in custody so far will be deducted from your sentence.
10. My reasons for imposing that sentence follow.

1. The sentence indication (and now the plea and sentence) proceeded on the following agreed statement of facts that were just read by the prosecutor.
2. There is a degree of overlap between the offending behaviour that needs explanation now.
3. Over the period of the offending (30 April 2018 to 27 April 2022), so spanning some four years, you amassed a large amount of identity information, including the details of bank accounts, identities, mobile phones and addresses. This allowed you to create false bank accounts. The identity information aggregated over time and was stored on spreadsheets on USBs, one of which was seized by the informant under warrant from your house in Deer Park on 6 May 2022.
4. These false bank accounts allowed for unknown perpetrators of financial scams to use false personas to offer puppies and other fictious property, i.e. mobile phones, for sale to unaware consumers. Such goods and services were never provided. The payments for the offered puppies and/or property were paid by consumers into false accounts. The unknown perpetrators also used the false bank accounts to receive money from consumers, on the pretence that monies were owed to various entities such as the ATO.
5. Once you had created a false bank account, that false bank account was then used by perpetrators of the respective scams to obtain money from consumers, and it was paid into such accounts.
6. You were then able to withdraw some of the funds from a false bank account from ATMs, by way of a payment for you for the provision of the false account. You would then deposit some of that payment into your account with Hai Ha, which I will come to in a moment.
7. It is not the prosecution's case that you directly took part in making false representations to consumers. That said, it is to be noted the identity information that you had was used by unknown perpetrators to scam 88 consumers and attempted to scam three others.
8. The identify information used in these scams can be linked to the spreadsheets recovered from your premises. A summary of the scams perpetrated was contained in Appendix A, attached to the prosecutor's opening.[4]
9. But overall they are grouped as follows:

(a) Puppy scams - 60 (including one attempt);

(b) Product for sale scams, i.e. cameras - 18 (including one attempt); and

(c) Entity Scams, i.e. ATO - 13 (including one attempt).

1. The total amount obtained by scammers using these methods was in excess of $238,000, and the total attempted amount was more than $37,000.
2. The Crown do not allege that you received the benefit of all the funds listed in Appendix A. Rather, whatever you received cannot be itemised and was payment for providing the bank accounts.
3. Whatever was received by you makes up an unknown portion of part of the greater sum in Appendix C which is close to $880,000.

1. In relation to that charge, it is expressly comprised of:

(a) the identity information found in the spreadsheets on the seized USB, which is 1,435 identifications including their names, dates of birth, driver's licences and residential address etc.;

(b) 95 different credit cards found in your car by police; and

(c) Two credit cards not in your name.

Charge 2 - Recklessly Dealing with Proceeds of Crime

1. The analysis of the USB seized from your residence disclosed the spreadsheet that the prosecutor just read out.
2. It is the entry that reads, troublingly:

This service clean your money. I will help cash out (dirty/black/) money swap to bitcoin.

The reason why you chose my service, why are you here to need my help.

You have dirty/black money and cannot use it or cash out, send it to my bank account and I will send bitcoin to your wallet.

You are living outside Australia and cannot withdraw money from bank account, I will help you withdraw money, send it to my account.

You don't have bank account to receive money, I supply you a real Australian bank account (login and password) and you can receive and send money to anyone you want.

Are you looking for the guy help you cash out scam or fraud money, I am here to help you"

I am profession seller bitcoin on localbitcoin for 4 years, and now I run this business to help anyone cash out black or dirty money.

My service is real and I guarantee your money is safe.

Cash out (stolen/fraud/scam. (you selling fake items online and ask your client make payment to my account".

I supply Australian bank account to receive and send money to anyone you like. You just buy bank account from me and do anything you want. easy to receive and send money online

Cash out hacked account, you just all money to my account and I will help you cash out.

We can share profit and I am here to run this business for long term

Of course this service is black money so I very dangerous and risky to me so I offer 50%-50%, you take 50% total paid and I take 50%.

It's fair for both your mission to make money for free and my job is cash out, witdraw (sic) money and send to your bitcoin wallet'.

1. This appears to be something akin to a business plan where you advertise exactly what you are doing, the risks you know you are taking and the benefit you expect to get from involving yourself in unlawful activity of this kind.
2. The Crown acknowledge as part of the resolution of this matter they cannot prove that you received 50 per cent of any proceeds of crime, and have accepted a plea to the charge of dealing with proceeds of crime on the basis that you were reckless as to what precise criminal activity your 'customers' were involved in.

1. The prosecutor has taken the court through the structure of Hai Ha and how it was used. It was a money transfer business in Springvale.
2. On 163 occasions, over a period of about 10 months from 5 May 2020 to 27 February 2021, you made international money transfers using that service that is summarised in Appendix C.
3. The total of those transactions is about $879,535.50 in just 10 months.
4. In order to use the transfer services, you had to set up a profile and provide identification, a residential address, a phone number and sometimes an email address. Once a profile was created, transfers could be made at any Hai Ha branch, but dentification was required to be provided.
5. The sender is recorded as 'Hoang Anh Vu', with a date of birth in 1989. The transfers made between the dates that I mentioned earlier were all made to a receiver named 'Hoang Anh Vu', being you.
6. For the transfers, you matched addresses linked to those recorded on your driver's licence and for the majority of transfers, your mobile number was recorded as ending in 462.
7. Sometime in 2020, due to the amount of money being transferred, you were requested to verify your income. When the request was made, tellingly, you stopped going to use the money transfer service.
8. The transfers were sent by you in Australia to a bank account belonging to you in Vietnam.
9. The prosecution allege (and you accept) that the moneys transferred, that is close to $880,000, were an offence contrary to s192C(1) of the Crimes Act 1958.
10. This is on the basis that:

(a) Since you arrived in Australia, the only work you were involved in was as a waiter and you could not recall what restaurants you worked in.[5] The Crown note that work at the time in restaurants was limited due to COVID, but I also note the point made by Mr Dickenson which was that you were essentially unfit to be interviewed because you were unwell;

(b) During the time of these transfers, you were possessing identifying information which allowed bank accounts to be set up to receive moneys and that you were reckless as to whether the received moneys were the proceeds of crime.

1. You were arrested on 27 April 2022 and you were said, as I said, to be unfit for interview because of dizziness, headaches and depression.

1. The matter has proceeded through the criminal justice in an involved, if I can put it that way, way:

Pre-trial part 1 (5 Days)

Pre-trial part 2 (5 Days)

1. This history though is an aspect of this case that requires explanation. Originally, you were charged with in excess of 400 individual offences.
2. Once committed for trial, a 50-count indictment, made up of 44 obtain financial advantage by deception charges, one charge of knowingly deal with proceeds of crime (that is the version of that offence punishable by 20 years' imprisonment), two charges of possession of identification information and attempt to obtain financial advantage by deception was filed.
3. The original summary of prosecution opening weighed in at 160 pages long. The evidentiary notices involved a tendency notice of 26 pages, with a similarly proportioned co-incidence notice. There was a notice of incriminating conduct of similar volume and, dare I say it, complexity.
4. Pre-trial argument commenced earlier in the year, on two of no less than nine pre-trial issues, being:[6]

(a) A request for further and better particulars of the basis of alleged liability;

(b) The continuity of the spreadsheet and objection to its admissibility;

(c) The admissibility of Tendency evidence;

(d) The admissibility of Coincidence evidence;

(e) An application for separate trials;

(f) An application to exclude uncharged acts;

(g) Application to exclude evidence seized by police after a search of your vehicle in June 21;

(h) Questions as to the relevance of the evidence in your record of interview; and

(i) Admissibility of post offence conduct evidence.

1. Further and better particulars as to your role (if any) in the representations made in the scams needed to be provided more than once and I should add that that is not a criticism.
2. The circumstances in which you were pulled over in your car and searched (leading to the location of a number of credit cards that were an important part of the Crown case) were the subject of a voir dire. I was yet to rule on that matter and was not proposing to do so until I dealt with all of the myriad of pre-trial issues that required attention and consideration. I will say that the argument about the search was not without merit.
3. The analysis (or collation) of the spreadsheets containing the large number of identification details was also the subject of evidence on a voir dire, where it became apparent that the data relied on was not extracted or collated in an ideal way. Consequently, a key piece of evidence (the spreadsheets on the USB) needed to be re-analysed from scratch, further delaying the resolution of pre-trial matters. This argument too was not without merit.
4. The initial trial date was vacated, but the parties, to their credit, worked tirelessly to get the matter to a point where resolution was possible.
5. At the first sentence indication hearing, the matter was confirmed for trial, which was to commence on 27 October 2025 for about eight weeks, but in all likelihood would have been longer. You would need an interpreter, which of course adds to the time required in court.
6. Other orders made confirming the trial then underscored just what a labour intensive and complex time-consuming exercise this was going to be (that is to say, getting the matter trial ready).
7. The informant was on leave or had other important court commitments in the lead up to the trial. The Crown would need to retain new counsel (given

Mr Devlin's retirement) and give them proper time and thus expend further resources, allowing them to get up to speed on a large and complex brief. 8. The USB spreadsheet had still yet to be analysed. 9. The time available to the Court for pre-trial argument was very limited. The Court would be tied up in evidence, submissions or writing rulings for weeks, not days, even before empanelment. 10. Seen even soon after the sentence indication hearing, the value of a plea for such a complex and labour-intensive trial (or trials, plural) is simply colossal. 11. The plea was entered without requiring me to rule on matters that may (and I stress may) have resolved in a way favourable to you is an important factor. You have now pleaded guilty to matters that are serious but are but a fraction of that which was originally alleged against you.

1. You are 35 years old, having been born in October 1989.
2. You have no prior criminal history of any kind, nor any subsequent history. I am told regrettably now there are matters pending, but I cannot take those matters into account.

1. You were born and raised in a small village in Tay Ning, Vietnam. It was a largely agricultural with rice farming being the predominant crop.
2. You were the middle of five siblings. Your parents ran a small shop selling hardware and other agricultural needs. Money was always tight, and your parents were strict.
3. On at least two occasions, your father, Duyen, kicked his wife (your mother) and the children out of the home. You witnessed significant physical abuse of your mother.

1. You completed Year 12 at the local secondary school where you were a reasonable student.[8]
2. You moved to Ho Chi Minh City to study economic relations and that three three-year degree was completed at the end of 2010.
3. After this, you obtained customer service roles with a finance company and then a subsidiary of a bank. These roles were not particularly lucrative and had limited opportunities for progression. Making ends meet was a struggle with the relatively high cost of living in Ho Chi Minh City.

1. You came to Australia in 2015 on a student visa to study business management.
2. After three months you were informed that your parents could no longer afford to pay the fees for the course. You then commenced another course in cookery. That one had a lower tuition fee.
3. At the end of 2016, you left that course as you were unable to meet living expenses while studying fulltime.
4. You then performed a number of mainly labouring jobs. These included working in a Chinese grocer, a butcher's, waiting, picking strawberries and apples, packing eggs, labouring in a cabinetry factory and as a delivery man.
5. During COVID this type of work was particularly difficult to come by.
6. Your offending pre-dates the pandemic and continued after it had more or less abated.
7. I do not know why you involved yourself in this prior criminal activity or to what extent, if any, the pandemic really played in it. The date range of Charge 2 broadly corresponds with the outbreak of COVID, but it would be speculative to find that there is in fact a relationship between these two matters. Your wife's letter, provided only on 4 July 2024 [9] notes you were under great stress during this period and felt the burden of providing for your wife and family, but you yourself have not given a reason why you offended in this way.

1. Speaking of your wife, you met your wife in Australia in 2017. You were married the year after and have two daughters born here in December 2018 and June 2020.
2. Neither you, nor your wife or children, have returned to Vietnam since your arrival in Australia. You are not a citizen of Australia.
3. You have weekly video contact with your wife and children. You have been remanded essentially at Fulham which makes your prison visits exceedingly difficult on your family. The last in person visit you had was in April 2024. Prior to that it was in 2023.
4. You are on a, as I understand it, criminal justice visa while your wife's application for a protection visa is being processed. The basis of that application is fear for her safety back in Vietnam.
5. Your wife provided a letter as I said to the court on 4 July 2025,[10] which speaks of your qualities as a father and as a husband. It is clear you miss your family very much, and they miss you.
6. You have left a terrible burden for your wife to bear on her own without you.

1. You report no drug, alcohol or gambling issues. To that end, those do not exist as motivations for the offending, nor are they barriers to reform.

1. You report suffering from symptoms of depression and anxiety, but there is no formal diagnosis, and you are not currently prescribed medication. I expect that this is relatively uncontroversial, given the fact that you are a first-time offender who has been in custody for such a long time, isolated and apart from his family, with a sense of uncertainty about your fate.

1. As I said, you have no prior convictions either here or in Vietnam. You have no subsequent matters either. [11]

1. There is an interaction between the counts and your overall criminality. I need to consider the specific considerations to offences of these types and identify relevant features of the present offending that inform their gravity, seriousness and sentencing purposes.

1. For identification offences, counsel, I have reproduced the section in full in my written reasons:

s 192C - Possession of identification information

(1) A person, who possesses identification information (that is not identification information that relates to the person), and -

(a) who is aware that, or aware that there is a substantial risk that, the information is identification information; and

(b) who intends to use the information to commit an indictable offence, or to facilitate the commission of an indictable offence -

is guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years.

1. This provision criminalises not just the possession of the identification of others, but it also requires proof that they be possessed essentially for nefarious purposes, and you accept that this is so through your plea. Your misappropriation here of the identification of others was not innocent, nor was it accidental. It was used in the facilitation of other serious offences.

1. Proceeds of crime offences carry a broad spectrum of activity and can be committed in a number of ways under s194. You of course pleaded to the charge under s194(3) which is on a reckless basis
2. Money laundering (and this is in part how it is put against you) is a serious criminal activity which justifies stern punishment and general deterrence. I am to look at your state of mind or belief, as well as the quantum of what was dealt with, over what duration and how many transactions, and how sophisticated it was. The prosecution referred to Boyton v The Queen [12] to provide what assistance they could in relation to comparable cases but accepted it had limited utility.
   1. I was taken to a single other case in this court of DPP v Tang[13], a decision of this court where a substantial amount of money was dealt with for a different result.
   2. I accept the limitations of referring singularly to a limited range of cases, such as here in terms of analysing current sentencing practices or the appropriate 'range'.

1. Both charges here are rolled-up charges and when sentencing I have to approach the task in a particular way.
2. Rolled-up charges require an offender's agreement and are only for the purposes of a plea and they have benefits. They simplify the sentencing court's task and work to the benefit of the offender by allowing multiple instances of similar offending to be dealt with as a single charge, rather than through numerous separate charges and that is obviously the case here and confirms ultimately the cooperative approach you have taken in resolving the matter.
3. When sentencing for a rolled-up charge, the court I must consider all of the circumstances of the offence and the offender, including if the offending was carried out over an extended period, victimised multiple persons, and the totality of harm described in the charge.
4. While I must consider all the relevant circumstances of a rolled-up charge, the pleading must still be considered or treated as presenting, one single formal charge and the maximum penalty is therefore limited to the maximum for a single charge, though, 'a significantly higher sentence is justified on a rolled-up charge than would be the case for a single offence'.[14]

1. Mr Dickenson submitted that the offending falls into the middle to lower range of seriousness for these offences. It is relevant that the offences on which the indication is sought (and you have pleaded to) are not the most serious of examples. The maximum penalty for each offence must be taken to indicate that whilst this offence is serious, or the offending is serious, it is not the most serious.
2. The Crown does not agree with that characterisation as the offending has aspects of preparation, sophistication and is protracted[15] and I find that this is an accurate assessment of the seriousness of this offending. The sheer quantum dealt with in Charge 2 clearly elevates the gravity of the matter.

1. I have been asked to consider yours as a reasonably early plea. It is noted that the prosecution had previously charged you with the serious offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice and many, many, other offences that did not proceed. I have already made observations of the high utilitarian value of your plea of guilty. It is also indicative of your acceptance of responsibility for your actions.
2. I repeat what I have said when dealing with the case history of the matter when assessing the high degree of utility your plea has.

1. There has been a delay of over three years in this matter reaching resolution. That time has not been easy for you. It is your first time in custody.
2. You have a limited grasp English. As such, your time in custody is more difficult. You are separated from family and are generally anxious about future.
3. You have been on remand, essentially as I said at the Fulham Correctional Centre since 27 April 2022.
4. As at the date of the sentencing indication hearing, your pre-sentence detention was 1,150 days. It is now 1,164 days, or just over 3 years and two months.
5. A significant period of the time you spent on remand was during COVID and that is more onerous than is usual, [16] which requires factoring in the punitive effect of the time you have already served.
6. The delay is not insignificant, though perhaps understandable in a way, given the sheer volume of material and the allegations originally levelled against you, which notably included the 44 allegations of obtaining financial advantage by deception and the more serious version of the deal with proceeds of crime charge. The Crown accept that there has been in reduction in the number, nature and gravity of the allegations made against you and they have accepted a plea on the proceeds of crime charge (put on the basis of recklessness) in favour of those earlier advanced as obtain financial advantage by deception.
7. Having said that, the allegations remain unchanged when one looks at the identification offences and you finally accepted that the underlying basis of the allegations constituting Charge 2 were always made out.
8. The delay is significant, especially when one sees that you have used your time fruitfully. You have engaged in programs, including Level II Certificates in cookery, horticulture and Skills for Work and Vocational Pathways.[17]
   1. You have had the matter hanging over your head since your initial arrest. You have endured a state of uncertainty in difficult circumstances.[18]

1. As far as I can discern, you have good prospects of rehabilitation. You have no identifiable vices or barriers to reform. You enjoy the support from your wife and children, with your wife confirming her commitment to ensure that this never happens again.

1. This has been your first time in custody, and it has proven to be a salient experience. It has been both isolating and aversive. I trust that you have been specifically deterred.

1. You have been particularly concerned over the prospects of deportation and this is particularly acute, given your wife is subject to a protection visa and is fearful of her return to Vietnam.[19] I am told you are on a criminal justice visa and that you too now are applying for a protection visa.
2. Adding to this concern is the uncertainty surrounding the immigration status of your daughters.
3. You have a reasonable and significant concern that you may be permanently separated from your wife and children.

1. The court cannot anticipate any executive action in relation to you, but the risk of deportation is mitigatory because you may:[20]

(a) receive this, your sentence, with the expectation of being deported as a result; and > > (b) lose your opportunity of settling permanently here.

1. I take into account the uncertainty that accompanies your predicament, noting that it obviously weighs on you, even though that you are the architect of this sad state of affairs yourself.

1. I am mindful of the significance of this case of the application of totality which requires me, when sentencing for multiple offences, to ensure that the aggregate term I impose is a just and appropriate measure of the criminality involved.
2. There must be an appropriate relativity between the totality of all the criminality and the totality of the sentence I impose. This is true when I consider the interaction between the charges on the indictment. I have determined an appropriate length of imprisonment for each charge, taking the applicable sentencing considerations into account, and designated the highest term as the base, and then determined the extent to which there should be any cumulation regarding the other count, and finally stood back and considered in light of totality what an appropriate sentence should be.
3. The total nature of the offending warrants a measure of cumulation between counts, given they represent distinct and different criminality.

1. A sentencing court must impose a non-parole period for a sentence of more than two years, unless it is not appropriate to do so.[21]
2. The non-parole period as a sentence of imprisonment is the minimum term a court determines that justice requires the offender must serve, given all of the circumstances, before being eligible for release on parole. A minimum term is fixed because mitigating considerations or rehabilitation may make it undesirable for an offender to serve their entire term in prison. The non-parole period does not determine the date an offender will be released on parole. It fixes a time after which the Parole Board or authorised individuals or entities may decide if, and when, an offender is to be released.
3. A Court is prohibited from considering the possibility or likelihood that the length of time spent in custody 'will be affected by executive action of any kind'.[22] That includes executive action such as your release on parole. In fixing a non-parole period, I must consider that you may have to serve every day of the head sentence.
4. Further, an offender must not be denied eligibility for parole on the basis they are likely to be deported or transferred interstate upon the expiration of any minimum term.[23]
5. However, as deportation or transfer may be relevant to an offender's prospects, a court may consider it for that purpose, but it should be careful to explain the length of the non-parole period has not been increased because of that possibility.[24]
6. I have approached your case with those principles in mind.

1. Mr Dickenson contended that a straight sentence of time served was open to me, but in all the circumstances I favoured the view of the Crown. That is, a head sentence and non-parole period was warranted.
2. Mr Devlin conceded that you would be approaching any non-parole period if you were to plead guilty,[25] but that did not mean the sentence ought to be artificially compressed or reduced to simply reflect the fact that you have already served a significant amount of time with no further component to the sentence upon release (whenever that may be).
3. This is a matter of sufficient gravity to warrant a head sentence and non-parole period. I am not convinced that a sentence of three years is sufficient to justify or satisfy all sentencing considerations. The sentence I impose can be tempered somewhat by the mitigation of punishment in allowing you to be released under supervision, should the Adult Parole Board permit it, but that is a matter for others.

1. Having considered the matter, and weighed the necessary sentencing considerations, I will sentence you as follows:

Possess identity information, (Rolled up between 30 April 2018 - 27 April 2022)

s.192C(1) of the Crimes Act 1958.

Recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime. (Rolled up between 5 May 2020 - 27 Feb 2021)

s.194(3) of the Crimes Act 1958

1. It is my intention to sentence you to a total effective sentence of four years and two months' imprisonment. I declare that you serve three years before being eligible for parole. I declare 1,164 days as having already been served in satisfaction of this sentence which is a little over three years and two months.

1. I will defer the finalisation of the ancillary orders for disposal and forfeiture.
2. Pursuant to s6AAA, of the Sentencing Act 1991, I declare that but for your plea of guilty to these charges, I would have sentenced you to a total effective sentence of six years and eight months' imprisonment with a non-parole period of five years.

[1] Criminal Procedure Act 2009 (Vic) ('CPA').

[2] That is to say expressed in the way contemplated by s 207 of the CPA.

[3] Taken from SPO dated 10 June 2025, Exhibit A.

[4] I have not included the appendices to these reasons.

[5] Record of Interview, noting that you were unfit because of illness so I do not take an adverse view of this claim.

[6] Defence Pre-Trial Submissions dated 12 February 2025.

[7] Taken from Exhibit AV-1: Submissions on SIH dated 18 June 2025.

[8] which seems to understate things, you are clearly bright, as your academic history makes plain.

[9] Exhibit AV-3: Letter from Mrs Quyen Vu dated 4 July 2025.

[11] Though that I was informed of them today is typical of your Counsel's candour.

[12] [2016] VSCA 13. A case which involved a very young offender in multiple electronic commerce-based dishonesty and fraud offences who received 1 year and a CCO on appeal. He made full restitution and had excellent prospects for reform.

1. [13] [2019] VCC 1857. I note Tang pleaded guilty to 5 offences under the s.400.9(1) of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, (maximum penalty of 3 years each offence). He was a 42-year-old Hong Kong national employed by a sham business that laundered $4.2 million. There was a delay in that case, and he made impressive efforts at reform.

[14] DPP v Conos [2021] VSCA 367, [75].

[15] See Exhibit B: Plea Submissions dated 22 June 2025.

[16] Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169.

[17] Exhibit AV-2: Bundle of Certificates.

1. [18] R v Tezer and Davis [2007] VSCA 123; R v Merrett, Piggott and Ferrari [2007] VSCA 1.

[19] I was not informed of the basis of this at the plea

1. [20] Guden v The Queen [2010] VSCA 196; (2010) 28 VR 288, 295 [27], see also Loftus v The Queen [2019] VSCA 24, [79] (Whelan AP and Niall JA).

[21] Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 11.

[22] Ibid s 5(2AA)(a).

[23] See, eg, The Queen v Shrestha (1991) CLR 48, 71-73, 76; R v Friedemann [1998] VSCA 9; [1999] 1 VR 162, 169-70 [27]; Nguyen v The Queen [2010] VSCA 244, [15]-[17]; Adenopo v The Queen [2011] VSCA 269, [6].

[24] Mann v The Queen [2011] VSCA 189, [40]-[44].

[25] Without transgressing the rule against proffering a 'range', as stated in Barbaro v The Queen; Zirilli v The Queen [2014] HCA 2.