R v Dimitri DE ANGELIS

REMARKS ON SENTENCE 1I am sentencing a man who defrauded over a dozen people - over some four years - of amounts totalling over $8,000,000. The man's name is Dimitri De Angelis. What I will do first is to set out the offences that I am sentencing him for. I will formally convict him of those offences then I will say something about what he did to bring about the charges against him. I will then say something, as a judge must, about the personal circumstances of Mr De Angelis, the offender. I will canvass the arguments put by the prosecution and the defence and, finally, I will sentence Mr De Angelis. 2Mr De Angelis has pleaded guilty to 16 crimes. Fourteen of those crimes are offences against s 176A of the Crimes Act 1900. As it happens that section has since been repealed but it was the applicable law at the time. The maximum penalty provided by Parliament for such an offence is 10 years imprisonment. 3I am also sentencing him for two offences of dishonestly obtaining for himself money by a deception. Once again that provision has been repealed but it was the law at the relevant time and that offence carries a maximum of 5 years imprisonment. 4The list of offences, all 16 of them, are contained in an indictment signed by Mr M. G. O'Brien, the Crown Prosecutor who appeared for the Director of Public Prosecutions in these sentence proceedings. When I am sentencing Mr De Angelis for the first offence in the indictment, he has asked me to take into account an additional charge which is also an offence under s 176A of the Crimes Act. He has signed a form provided for by s 32 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999, asking me to do that. I will take into account that offence when sentencing him for count 1 in the indictment and I have signed the form to that effect. 5If I have not done so already, I formally convict Mr De Angelis of all 16 of the offences contained in the indictment which was dated 31 August 2012. 6What Mr De Angelis did to bring about these charges is set out in exhibit A. Exhibit A is a folder entitled "Agreed Facts" and contains a 77 page document signed by Mr De Angelis as well as his legal representative and Mr O'Brien and dated 3 September 2012. It sets out in considerable detail all of the background to the various offences that he committed. 7It is important to observe at this stage that I am sentencing him on the basis of those agreed facts. The Court of Criminal Appeal in this State has made it clear that the parties, and indeed to some extent the Judge, are bound by the facts which are agreed and tendered. I will draw on those agreed facts to briefly summarise what happened. 8It is said that, in essence, "through a series of false and misleading representations, the offender defrauded a number of persons". Mr De Angelis did this by "persuading those persons to put money into a company of which he was sole director. Through his false and misleading representations and conduct the offender lead those persons to believe that by investing their money in the company they were guaranteed to earn extraordinarily large amounts of money". 9There was indeed a company called Emporium Music Production and Distribution Pty Limited which was registered with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission on 5 February 2005. Mr De Angelis was the sole director, shareholder and secretary of that company. It was supposedly in the business of "promoting singers, musicians and bands, and producing and distributing those artists' various recordings, in the form of CD's and DVDs". 10To various victims of his offences he made "a series of false and misleading representations". Some of those included the following: