Supreme Court lifts the lid on ‘lifetime of fraud’ by John Goros, who fleeced $111,000 from clients through false asbestos claim

Meet John Goros, aka John Phillips, John Gorcilov, John Sharpe ... this prolific Adelaide conman’s astonishing range of devious crimes adds up to $9.8m over two decades.

John Goros – aka John Gorcilov – has a history of fraud offending dating back to the mid-1990s.

Fleecing $111,000 from eight demolition clients by falsely claiming their worksites are riddled with asbestos is, on first blush, quite the lucrative fraud.

But when your name is John Goros – aka John Gorcilov, John Phillips, John Sharpe and either John or George Tomaras – that sum of cash is but the tip of the rubble heap.

This week, the Supreme Court laid bare the long and deceitful history of Goros’s various aliases ahead of penalising his fake asbestos scheme.

It’s a past replete with bizarre real estate deals, a dodgy nursing home, internet giant Yahoo, attempts to obtain $8.5 million in bank loans and even a stint as an unlicensed lawyer.

As he made his way through Goros’ criminal history, Chief Justice Chris Kourakis wryly noted the amounts taken had become “less extravagant” over time.

“Goros has lived a lifetime of offending almost, but age seems to have mellowed his behaviour,” he quipped.

John Goros at his 1996 wedding, officiated under the name “John Gorcilov”.

NURSING A FRAUD

Last month, Goros and his company, known as both Demolition Experts Pty Ltd and Hindmarsh Demolition, were found to have engaged in deceptive and misleading conduct.

In dealings with eight clients in 2016, they falsely claimed to have discovered asbestos at work sites and charged to dump the non-existent substance.

They also used “undue pressure and tactics” to exploit their “bargaining power” over those clients, resulting in “gross inequality” and conduct “against society’s good norms”.

Goros was not in court to hear the verdict – he attended his trial on just one occasion – on the latest incident in his long catalogue of offending.

In 1995, Goros – then Gorcilov – stepped in when a SA Police questioned his friend over an alleged $30,000 fraud and claimed to be the man’s lawyer.

His actual job, at the time, was nursing manager of Dora’s Lodge Retirement Complex at Morphettville.

Goros was also the fraudster’s accomplice – he received a suspended 12-month sentence for the crime and a $3200 fine for pretending to be a legal practitioner.

Dora’s Lodge, meanwhile, was stripped of its licence over complaints about its standard of care.

Goros, as “John Phillips”, attempting to avoid the media outside court in 2001.

YAHOO SERIOUS

Three years later, Goros – now Phillips – was accused of having committed a $1.2 million fraud to buy a different nursing home, at Glenelg, in 1997.

He also ran afoul of Yahoo, which filed an injunction to stop him using the similarly named Yahoo.net.au site and falsely claiming to be connected to the internet search giant.

Jailed for deception, Goros was charged yet again in 2002 for ducking $30,000 worth of sales tax on his $200,000 boat.

He duped his way into the discount by falsely claiming he owned a business in Hong Kong, thereby making the sale exempt – but lawyer Heather Stokes asked for mercy.

“My client was out of control about this time … he feels he’s already been punished enough by being separated from his wife and five children under the age of five,” she said.

“He feels he is punished every day and will never ever be in this situation again so, in that sense, there's no need to punish him further.”

The plea fell on deaf ears – Goros was jailed for 21 months.

Goros outside the District Court in 2005, prior to his sentencing for attempted frauds worth $8.5 million.

FALSE FACES

Each of Goros’ arrests had brought police one step closer to uncovering his biggest crime – seeking to siphon $8.5 million over six months through four fake identities.

He was arrested yet again in 2004 for approaching banks, including the Commonwealth, NAB and St George, for loans to buy several properties.

Goros tried to purchase a Hindley St motel complex, the defunct Bunnings store at Windsor Gardens and a West Lakes home, as well as a luxury cabin cruiser.

He did so under the Tomaras, Sharpe and Gorcilov identities – resulting in his father Filip Gorcilov, then 68, being arrested as well.

The charges against Filip Gorcilov were eventually dropped due to his ill health while Goros, who pleaded guilty, spent the next 12 months on home detention bail.

Again, Ms Stokes asked the court to consider her client’s family and spare him a hefty prison sentence.

“This is one of those special cases where the devastating flow-on would be more like a tsunami than a ripple for those that immediately surround my client,” she said.

“His previous jail time had been a salutary lesson … there's no prospect for this man to ever commit like offending ever again.”

Perhaps foreseeing the irony of that submission, the District Court opted against leniency and jailed Goros for five years, with a three-year non-parole period.

The banner image on Goros’s Twitter account.

INSIDIOUS

This week, the Commissioner for Consumer Affairs asked Chief Justice Kourakis to not only financially penalise Goros, but also order he repay each of his asbestos scam victims.

Warwick Ambrose, for the Commissioner, said attempts to contact Goros and have him attend court had proven futile.

He said that, when asked via email for an address to serve papers, Goros had sent process servers to “a commercial butcher’s shop” with no connection to him.

“This offending is insidious in its own way … the penalty needs to be more than just the cost of doing business,” he said.

Chief Justice Kourakis agreed.

“(Fraudsters) have got to know that the mathematics of continuing to cheat will not work out in the end,” he said.

“Goros is not going to be penalised again for his lifetime of fraud, but there’s also no scope for mitigation in light of that history.”

He will hand down his penalty decision on a date to be set.