Exposed: Geelong’s dumbest crooks of 2024
From taking a nap inside a home being burgled, to stealing a shopping centre bollard or committing the same crimes again and again, these are some of Geelong’s dumbest criminals to front court this year. SEE THE LIST.
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Every year Geelong’s courts see their fair share of criminals, from drug traffickers, sex pests and violent thugs.
Hundreds – if not thousands – of people front the city’s courts every year, and not all of them are destined to be the next Einstein.
From botched burglaries to laughable lapses in judgment, the following list highlights some of the region’s most hapless offenders.
The Geelong Advertiser has trawled the archives for those cases concerning crooks that made choices that defy reason.
Here are some of the dumbest criminals to go through Geelong courts in 2024.
Rodney Kilner
Rodney Kilner had just evaded police in a brief chase when he jumped out of his car to change clothes in October last year.
While changing, he managed to lock himself out of his car, leading him to breaking a window with a rock to get back inside.
The incident came among a spree in which Kilner also smashed the front doors of Harvey Norman in Corio, but failed to get through the second set of doors.
Frustrated, Kilner removed screws from a trestle table in the foyer and tried to pull a mailbox from a wall before leaving.
Kilner fronted Geelong Magistrates Court in July, and was fined and banned from driving, along with having his “bad decision making” put on blast.
Denis Shishkin
Oh, the things we do for love.
Former Geelong Grammarian Denis Shishkin turned to selling ice and cocaine to fund his lavish lifestyle, fearing his “capricious” girlfriend would leave him if he didn’t.
It was a decision that earned him at least two-years behind bars, with a maximum of three years and five months.
Shishkin had it all; his dream job selling high performance vehicles, a girlfriend, a stake in a cafe, but it all went downhill due to a coke habit and a desire to “keep up appearances” and lavish his partner with a “high-end lifestyle”.
His trafficking operation came to an end when his apartment was raided in July 2022.
Judge Peter Rozen sentenced Shishkin in the County Court in September, and said Shishkin’s dealing “wasn’t simply a case of street level trafficking”.
“This is serious offending, drugs such as methylamphetamine do untold damage to society as this court sees on a daily basis,” Judge Rozen said.
“You sought to profit from the misery …”
Jeffrey Papalia
Jeffrey Papalia avoided jail in 2021 after pleading guilty to cultivating cannabis, following 40 cannabis plants being found at his home two years earlier.
However, the Leopold man’s brush with the law didn’t deter him and in September this year, Papalia pleaded guilty in Geelong Magistrates Court to cultivating cannabis after being busted with 29kg worth of cannabis and cannabis plants in an “elaborate backyard set-up”.
His lawyer told the court Papalia used the cannabis in brownies and oil to treat chronic pain, stemming from being shot in the face at age 22.
Magistrate Franz Holzer warned Papalia he was “going to get pinged” if he continued to grow the plants.
“You’re on their radar, that’s the reality,” Mr Holzer told Papalia.
Papalia was placed on a good behaviour bond for two years without conviction.
Scott Quilliam
Some burglars are very good at what they do.
They can slip in and out of a home or business like a ninja, without a trace they had even crossed the threshold.
Others, such as Newcomb’s Scott Quilliam, are not so skilled.
When Quilliam burgled a Mount Duneed home during the festive season last year, he left behind a host of evidence – fingerprints on an empty Coca-Cola bottle and even a laptop that had been stolen from another property.
But that wasn’t the end of it – Quilliam also took a nap in one of the home’s beds and even showered and shaved.
Quilliam pleaded guilty in the Geelong Magistrates Court to the burglary, and other offending, in October this year.
In November, he was jailed in the County Court for at least three years, and a maximum of six, on charges stemming from a separate incident on New Year’s Day this year.
Muhammed Muradi
Patrolling police officers were travelling down Thompson Rd when they saw two cars parked opposite each other with their headlights on in the carpark of the Sphinx Hotel in June.
Sensing it was an obvious drug deal, the officers swooped and arrested those involved.
Muhammed Muradi was nabbed with deal bags, ketamine, MDMA and 23 bags of cocaine, the court heard at a bail application in July.
Muradi, who was already on two community corrections orders (CCOs) for drug-related offending, scoffed down some of the bags and briefly resisted arrest, running towards Thompson Rd.
Muradi’s lawyer told the court his client, who has an acquired brain injury and was stabbed in 2019, met the definition of a vulnerable adult.
Magistrate Simon Guthrie told Muradi it was a “double standard” to “sell drugs to the innocent” and then turn around and claim to be vulnerable himself.
Muradi was convicted and sentenced to 90 days in jail, with 86 reckoned as time served, to be followed by an 18-month community corrections order upon release.
Glen Andrew Bennett
Rodney Kilner and Scott Quilliam aren’t the only bungling burglars to front court this year.
Glen Bennett was jailed for six month in March after two failed break-in attempts at the Gordon.
Bennett, 44, tried to squeeze through a door to the TAFE campus.
However, he was unable to fit through and fled, only to return week later.
During his second attempt, Andrews attempted to remove screws from the doorframe before again fleeing.
A court heard the failed attempts occurred during a theft spree, where Bennett also broke into the Curlewis Golf Club and took $1386 worth of meat from Woolworths in Kingston Village Square shopping centre in Ocean Grove.
Magistrate Simon Guthrie told Bennett he must be a “massive disappointment to (his) parents”.
Aiden Thomson
A mobile phone dropped in a home’s backyard led police to 22-year-old car thief Aiden Thomson.
Thomson appeared in the County Court at Geelong in November, where he was jailed for a maximum of four years and four months, with a non-parole period of two years, over a series of burglaries and car thefts across Geelong, largely in a five day period in May.
The court heard Thomson had spurned multiple chances at rehabilitation and, with Judge Gerard Mullaly telling the court recidivist young offenders, like Thomson, “cannot expect these crimes will be explained away because they have become drug addicted”.
The court heard Thomson, who has never had a job, had a history involving “a bewildering number of aggravated burglaries and car thefts”.
Judge Mullaly urged Thomson to get his act together, otherwise he would serve “a life sentence in instalments”.
Sam Stevenson
In a crime a magistrate described as not making sense, bodybuilder Sam Stevenson stole an ashtray and bollard from the carpark of Corio Village shopping centre in December 2022.
The court heard CCTV captured the incident, in which the drunken bodybuilder was initially unable to remove the bollard with hands.
However, this didn’t stop him – Stevenson left and returned in a white van with an axe, which he used to finished the job.
Police officers on patrol pulled Stevenson over and searched the van, where they reported cigarette butts and water, but not the bollard.
Stevenson pleaded guilty to the theft in March and was sentenced to a six-month good behaviour bond, plus costs for the stolen bollard.
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Originally published as Exposed: Geelong’s dumbest crooks of 2024
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