Source : Perth Now news
A street magician and circus performer has avoided jail for his gold-buying role in a scam that left an Australian business out of pocket more than $160,000.
Braydon Taylor, 24, was slapped with a year-long community corrections order without conviction this month in the County Court of Victoria after pleading guilty to a charge of recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime.
He will also have to complete 150 hours of unpaid community work.
Handing down the sentence, Judge Sarah Dawes said Taylor was in significant debt when he was given the WhatsApp contact details of an mystery person who “needed a favour” by a fellow performer.
He gave out his bank account details to they mystery individual and was sent $164,492.24 on February 3 last year.
Taylor spent about $145,000 of the money on gold bullion form the Australian Bullion Company and Sun Capital Investments in the days that followed, providing his identity documents to the two companies.
He would later tell police he gave the gold to an “unknown person” as soon as he picked it up.
None of the money or gold was recovered by police.
The court was told the money came from a Victorian business based in Ballan that had been the victim of a business e-mail compromise scam, where a legitimate invoice is altered and the payment redirected elsewhere.
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Judge Sarah Dawes said Taylor had received “a proportion” of the $20,000 not used to buy gold to pay off his debts and was not directly involved in the scam.
“You were in a period of dire financial circumstances given that your only source of income at the time was street performing,” she said.
“You had some health issues, which affected the number of street performance shows you could do at the relevant time. You fell into thousands of dollars of debt, particularly with rent and were at risk of homelessness.”
The court was told Taylor withdrew some cash and spent the remaining money in his account buying items from retail stores and using rideshare services.
He was arrested three months later on July 9 and made “full admissions” to police about his role.
Prosecutors, the court was told, accepted he had no role in creating and sending the fake invoice.
The judge said Taylor’s offending spanned eight days and appeared to be “quite naive”, making no attempts to hide his involvement.
“Your offending was unsophisticated and appears in my view to be quite naive. Once police commenced investigating the theft, evidence of your involvement was inevitable,” she said.
In an interview with a clinical psychologist, Taylor said he knew he had “messed up big time” and was sorry for the impact of his actions on the business.
