Brazen NDIS ripoff: Qld man rorts $434k from kids, buys two houses

A heartless Queensland man who bought two Brisbane homes with more than $400,000 he siphoned from Federal government coffers earmarked for disabled kids from his community, has been jailed.

A heartless and greedy Queensland man who bought two Brisbane homes with more than $400,000 he brazenly siphoned from federal government coffers earmarked for disabled kids from his community, has been jailed.

Jonathan Nguyen, who came to Australia as a child as a refugee from Vietnam, appeared in the District Court in Brisbane on Thursday before Judge Katherine McGinness.

The court heard he defrauded the National Disability Insurance Scheme of $434,807 over five-and-a-half months between October 2020 and April 2021.

The court heard that the 37-year-old targeted vulnerable members of the Vietnamese community in Inala, abusing the trust he had gained when he worked as a disability support officer with a local provider company.

“You consistently claimed that you had rendered services - on some occasions adding up to more than 60 hours per day - clearly inaccurate,” Judge McGinness told him during sentencing.

“But for some reason you thought that you wouldn’t get caught, which is usually the way when people commit offences.

“It is clear that your offending was motivated by greed”.

Nguyen used an alias to submit 310 false invoices to the NDIS for services related to 21 NDIS participants, mostly children, fraudulently claiming for 6907 hours service worth $434,807.

He used the money to buy a “property portfolio”, of two houses in Springfield and Heathwood, which have since been sold in a bid to repay debts to the government.

He attempted to avoid detection by spreading his invoices over four provider companies.

Nguyen, who previously worked in aged care, was arrested by police on June 10, 2022 and spent one night in the watch-house before he was freed on bail the next day.

Commonwealth prosecutor Sunny van den Berg submitted the court that if the government were forced to do compliance checks with all NDIS payments it would be costly.

She added that NDIS fraud was increasing.

“The NDIS system is an honesty-based system and introducing thresholds and compliance checks into the system would be very expensive and burdensome to the Commonwealth, and would likely delay legitimate payments, thereby giving rise to potential hardship to those who need the services,” Ms van den Berg said.

Ms van den Berg also submitted that some of Nguyen’s victims had their funding depleted by his frauds, and Nguyen was motivated by greed alone and his crimes were “sophisticated, persistent and calculated”.

“This offending was very brazen, he was claiming an extraordinary amount of money in a short period of time,” Ms van den Berg.

“He was not operating any legitimate business,” he said.

Defence barrister Tim Ryan KC told the court Nguyen was remorseful and had written a letter of apology, filed in court.

Nguyen pleaded guilty to 21 charges of dishonestly causing a loss to the Commonwealth and four counts of attempting to cause a loss to the Commonwealth, which relates to his failed bid to claim a further $11,000.

He was sentenced to four years’ jail for the 21 charges, and two years for the four lesser charges, with a non-parole period of one year.

He has been ordered to pay reparation of $330,189.

A sum of $250,000 is sitting in his lawyer’s trust account ready to be paid to the government, leaving around $80,000 outstanding, Mr Ryan submitted.

The $250,000 was the proceeds of the sale of the two homes, his car and a loan from his partner, Mr Ryan said.

Originally published as Brazen NDIS ripoff: Qld man rorts $434k from kids, buys two houses