R v Geoghegan

Decision: Sentence of imprisonment of 6 years 6 months with a
non-parole period of 4 years

Catchwords: CRIME — Fraud — Dishonestly cause financial disadvantage by deception
SENTENCING — Mitigating factors — Prior good character — Plea of guilty
SENTENCING — Penalties — Imprisonment
SENTENCING — Relevant factors on sentence — Deterrence — General deterrence — Moral culpability — Multiple offences ‘rolled up’ — Objective seriousness
SENTENCING — Sentencing procedure — Instinctive synthesis
SENTENCING — Subjective considerations on sentence — Mental disorders — Major Depressive Disorder, PTSD, eating disorder

Legislation Cited: Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)
Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW)

Cases Cited: Miller v R [2014] NSWCCA 34

Category: Sentence

Parties: Lynne Maree Geoghegan (the offender)
Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW) (Crown)

Representation: Counsel:
M Barnes (for the offender)
Solicitors:
Culleton Lawyers (for the offender)
T Collison for the Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW) (Crown)

File Number(s): 2024/140686

JUDGMENT – ex tempore revised

Introduction

1. Lynne Geoghegan is for sentence today for one count of dishonestly causing financial disadvantage by deception. That charge, pursuant to s 192E(1)(b) Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) carries a maximum penalty of 10 years. She pleaded guilty to that charge in the Local Court. I am required, because of that early plea, to reduce the otherwise appropriate sentence by 25%, and I will do so.

2. The single offence for sentence before the Court involves a fraud that caused a disadvantage of over $2.4 million. None of that money has yet been recovered, although civil proceedings are in place, and some money is held in trust by the victim company’s solicitors.

3. The amount relates to 108 independent transactions against the victim company. Each, in theory, was a separate criminal offence, but they have been ‘rolled up’ for convenience to allow the total amount to be properly reflected in the sentence. There are benefits to the prosecution and the defence in rolling up of offending behaviour, but care needs to be taken in assessing what was in fact multiple acts of offending over a lengthy period. The number of criminal acts are of course, a relevant factor that must be considered.

4. The maximum penalty is another guide to the exercise of my sentencing discretion.

Agreed Facts

5. There are Agreed Facts before the Court. They reveal that the offender, who was born in 1976, commenced work with a company providing accounting services in March 2015. One of the clients of her employer was a local business providing services to the building industry. Her job was to prepare the end of month “creditors’ run”. This involved compiling tax invoices issued by suppliers, entering them on the accounting system and arranging payment. She had full access to the client company’s bank account.

6. Between May 2015 and February 2024 on 108 separate occasions Geoghegan fraudulently caused money held in the bank account of the building service company to be transferred into accounts that she operated on the pretext that they were payments owed by the services company to suppliers. The total amount she obtained was $2,461,371.51.

7. The criminal behaviour commenced in May 2015. It came to light because her employers were notified by the bank of, what they regarded as, a suspicious transfer. After an initial review, her employer was put off by what was clearly a lie and by their trust in the offender. They were satisfied that the transfer was legitimate when in fact a false invoice had been prepared. The bank, however, continued to contact the employer and despite more lies and more false invoices, it became clear that money was being transferred by Geoghegan to her personal account when that money in truth belonged to the building services company.

8. She was sacked on 4 April 2024. An audit which revealed the extent of her criminality was conducted. In the Agreed Facts, which are set out over many pages, details each of those transactions. I will not repeat them.

9. Following her termination, police were contacted. Geoghegan was arrested on 16 April 2024. At that time the full extent of her crimes was not apparent. That was revealed by the detailed audit summarised in the Agreed Facts.

10. What those facts reveal is a systematic, deliberate fraud. Geoghegan had a method; she was able to utilise the trust both her employer and the company for whom she was providing services had in her. It was only the actions of the bank that in fact alerted her employer, and thus precipitated the discovery of her fraud. That fraud must have had, given the amount involved, a significant impact on the business of the building services company, and on the reputation of her employer.

11. Prior to the commission of the offence, she was a person of good character, but the first fraudulent transaction meant that that good character, rather than being something to her benefit, was something that enabled her to maintain the trust of her employer and the company to which she provided services. She breached that trust.

12. There is material before the Court, particularly in the report of Dr Furst, which seeks to try and answer the “why” question. At one simplistic level what she did was done for greed. She had a good job, she had a good family, she had a supportive family and a husband who was in work. She did not need any of this money. It is clear that some of it, perhaps a large extent of it, was simply dissipated on clothes, food, but it will be for future civil proceedings to determine exactly where that money went.

13. Dr Furst, a psychiatrist with the respect of the Court, diagnosed her as having a Major Depressive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (‘PTSD’) and an eating disorder. He was asked whether these conditions contributed to the commission of the offence: see Exhibit 2.

14. He said, “yes”, there were multiple factors, causal relationships, between Ms Geoghegan’s mental disorders, conditions and her offending.

15. First, he says, “she has an inadequate personality style, characterised by persistent low self-esteem”. These “traits manifest in a desire to please other people”. Her feelings of inadequacy might have meant that “she needed to give more to her children to feel worthwhile as a mother, leading to initial fraudulent offences”.

16. Secondly, her eating disorder “was a core driver of excessive … shopping and her cooking …”.

17. Thirdly, “she was also in the habit of cooking food for others”.

18. Fourthly, “her online shopping, often for items she did not need, was likely a compulsive habit of acquiring items for a pathological/maladaptive thrill, which likely had the effect of relieving her anxiety, depression and PTSD symptoms as well as making her feel better about herself in the context of her low self-esteem”. He said:

“The overarching relationship between the mental disorders, including her eating disorder and inadequate personality of the offender, the four points outlined above, and her offending is analogous to the type of relationship seen between compulsive gambling associated with fraud offences or kleptomania in a pathological attempt to feel better and remove unpleasant emotional states by engaging in that activity, even though the activity funding that behaviour is against the law/leads to predictable social, legal, occupational and relational consequences”.

19. As I read it, and as he said later, she “understood her conduct and [had] the capacity to control herself, however, the psychological drive underlying her offending was strong and reinforcing”. Dr Furst notes that she is “potentially at … risk of relapsing”.

20. Those matters will be taken into account, but they do not impact on the objective seriousness of what she did. They help me best understand why she did what she did.

21. The objective circumstances are one, but not the only important guide to the exercise of my discretion. I agree with the assessment of the Crown in this matter that there was a high order of objective seriousness in the rolled up offence given the number of transactions and the length of time it occurred and, of course, the amount defrauded.

Victim Impact

22. The impact of the offending on the owner of the building services company is set out in a statement headed, “Victim Impact Statement”. This particular offence is not governed by the Victim Impact Statement provisions in the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW), s 27(2). Nevertheless, courts in sentencing must take into account the impact of the offending on victims and the community: Miller v R [2014] NSWCCA 34.

23. The report makes some personal comments and implores me to do things which I simply cannot do as a matter of law. I have to take into account all relevant factors. But it is clear that the sense of betrayal felt by the person she was providing services to, and the individuals with whom she would have worked as a team, has been deep, and the hurt extends beyond, and greater than, the substantial loss of money. As a consequence of her actions a lot more work has had to be done, procedures have had to be changed and people who work in the business now struggle to trust others.

24. As is set out in the statement, matters such as this cause people to “lose faith” in our others in our community. The owner of the business asks himself: What have I done to deserve this? When the answer is: Trust people who I have employed or had employed to provide services to me, to trust people who I thought could be trusted. It is entirely understandable that someone questions their actions.

25. At the same time, we will not be a community if we couldn’t not trust others, and we couldn’t run businesses without trust. The Court implores everyone involved to step back and consider that we are still a community, we still live in a community that relies upon others trusting others, whether it be in business or as employees, employers, and in the most part that trust is repaid and justified.

26. One principal reason for the high maximum penalty and for the need for courts to impose custodial sentences in matters such as this is to signal to others in the community, and the offender, the consequences of their actions – in the hope that others will learn from the penalty imposed. But courts, because we sentence those who do offend, recognise that these offences are not common, they are unusual, because most people in the community obey the law and, more importantly, obey the rules of our community which involve and depend upon trust.

Subjective case

27. The offender is seeing Dr Furst and I respect his opinion. She engaged and has been attending Mr Pepper, psychologist, who has done his best in the sessions that he has conducted to provide assistance to her and help her gain some understanding as to what she did.

28. Geoghegan has, in the material before me, including the Sentence Assessment Report (‘SAR’), expressed to psychologists, Dr Furst, a psychiatrist, and those who prepared the SAR, appropriate statements of remorse and shown insight into her offending behaviour. But as I remarked during the course of this morning’s hearing, she is an intelligent woman, she fully understood what she was doing. I am quite sure that when she committed each of the 108 acts, she felt some remorse, but that remorse did not prevent her offending again and again and again. And, when initially found out, it did not precent her attempting to avoid the consequences of her actions by more lies and more frauds.

29. Her underlying mental conditions require a degree of sympathy and understanding. They help explain her mental state at the time of the offending, that is, why she did what she did. They cannot, and nor is it sought by these reports, excuse what she did. Her underlying conditions will make her time in custody more difficult. It is unlikely she will get the detailed psychological treatment that she requires.

30. I ignore the one matter on her record where a non-penalty provision s 556A resulted, she will, as a person without prior contact with the criminal justice system, have trouble adjusting to prison life and then, on release, to leading a normal life back in the community.

31. She has family support and that, it appears, continues.

32. The offer of reparation following the sale of her family home has meant, on my rough analysis, that at least $350,000 will be available to the victim company. But there is still complex civil litigation to be sorted out. There is mention in the material of a tax liability being paid by her, but that tax liability was paid to cover up her crimes, and I will leave it to mediation or the civil courts to resolve that issue. It still leaves over $2 million as a loss, in financial terms, to the company, not including the impact of that loss on other aspects of their business or questions of interest.

Submissions

33. I have received the submissions of Mr Barnes, counsel for the offender, both orally and in writing, and Ms Collison, solicitor for the director, both orally and in writing. There is not a significant difference in principle between them, and I have sought to resolve those differences in these brief remarks.

34. In Ms Collison’s submissions reference was made to decisions of the appellate courts in matters involving similar amounts of money, and obviously I have taken into account the guidance of those decisions, but every case and every individual is different. Here, I have sought to synthesise all those relevant principles to which I have referred.

Synthesis

35. Geoghegan’s insight, with the assistance of Mr Pepper’s treatment, and those other factors require me to make a finding of special circumstances. That means there should be a period of supervision in the community on the expiry of what I assess as the very minimum period she must spend in custody as appropriate punishment for her crime. Given the length of the sentence I intend to impose, her release will be subject to an order of the State Parole Authority. Release will not be automatic. They will not release her if there are unresolved questions of community safety. But I would expect, given all the circumstances here, that she would be released at the expiry of that time, although it is not my decision to make.

36. In a sentencing for crimes such as this there is considerable need to impose a sentence that make appropriate reference to the maximum available and takes into account the plea. The sentence should reflect the harm caused to the company itself and those associated with it and to signal to others the impact of their offending. At the same time, courts have to realise that the heavy penalties imposed for frauds such as this, including gaol time, did not in any way deter Geoghegan from doing what she did.

37. There is no way that one can just simply calculate harm and then convert it to days, months, years in custody. What a court has to do is try is take into account the often contradictory purposes of sentencing and resolve that question by the imposition of a period in custody which, for her, will be substantial, although I suspect for the many victims of the crime, it will not be enough.

Orders

38. There will be a sentence of 6 and a half years.

39. The formal orders are: There will be a non-parole period of 4 years, the minimum period she must spend in custody, to date from 26 March 2025. She will be eligible for consideration of release to parole on 26 March 2029. There will be a parole period of 2 and a half years, reflecting my finding of special circumstances. It means the sentence will expire on 25 September 2031.

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