NSWNSWDC
R v McInnes
[2022] NSWDC 723
District Court of NSW|2022-11-21
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Source factsCourt
District Court of NSW
Decision date
2022-11-21
Source
Original judgment source is linked above.
Judgment (1 paragraphs)
[1]
- Paul Bruce McInnes, you appear for sentence today in relation to two principal offences, each being dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception.
- Each offence involves the contravention of section 192E(1)(b) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW).
- The maximum penalty for each offence is imprisonment for ten years and there is no standard non‑parole period.
- In addition to those two principal offences (which are respectively sequences 2 and 3) you have asked the Court to take into account one matter on a form 1, which I have certified. That matter is sequence 1. It is to be taken into account with sequence 2 and it is a matter of obtaining money by deception. That matter involves a contravention of section 178B(1) of the Crimes Act.
- The circumstances surrounding your offending are contained in a document entitled Statement of Agreed Facts and, for my purposes this afternoon, they can be summarised as follows.
- The offending involving sequences 1, 2 and 3 were all committed whilst you were a senior employee of Rheem Australia. You were relevantly the National Sales Manager or the General Manager, Sales.
- The offending took place over an 11 year period, from August 2007 to October 2018.
- The offending involved you making 53 individual fraud offences against your employer. The total amount of money that you (effectively) stole from your employer was a little over $2 million.
- The offending was carried out by a relatively sophisticated scheme whereby you submitted false invoices for services which were, in fact, never provided.
- The scheme went undetected for so long because of: the trust that was vested in you by your employer; and the senior level within the company that you occupied.
- It is agreed between you and the Crown that, of that very significant sum of money (a little over $2 million), some of it was misappropriated by you and directed in the following manner. Approximately $540,000 was used to carry out renovations to, and mortgage repayments for, your primary residence at Menai. An amount of almost $115,000 was used as a deposit and mortgage repayments for an investment property in Queensland. A little under $230,000 was used as a deposit and a mortgage repayments for a second investment property in Queensland. A little over $150,000 was used to buy a luxury boat. Almost $125,000 was used to buy a holiday home at Wiseman's Ferry. In late December 2018, at about the time that you were made redundant with Rheem, an amount of a little over $400,000 was transferred to a bank account controlled solely by your then wife.