Melinda Mary Marshall jailed for stealing $216k from Toowoomba practice
From ordering thousands of pills to creating phantom patients, read the full story of the Toowoomba mum whose elaborate fraud of a medical practice landed her behind bars.
A regional Queensland mother will spend the next nine months in jail after the medical practice manager pleaded guilty to stealing from her employer.
The former Darling Downs Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon practice manager, Melinda Mary Marshall, pleaded guilty to fraudulently stealing $216,059, and attempting to fraudulently steal $175,215.
In late November, the Toowoomba District Court was told the 48-year-old stole from her new employer months after she pleaded guilty to defrauding her former employer in Moree, where she also worked as a practice manager.
The court was told Marshall used three different methods to steal from the Toowoomba medical practice from July 2020 to May 2022.
The first of which was Marshall ordering drugs for herself, Panadeine Forte and Prodeine Forte, which the practice didn’t use.
Over a 22-month period, Marshall spent about $3300 of her employer’s money to get about 10,000 pills.
The second method involved the self-described addict making up fake patients who needed refunds, before emailing the practice’s account to have the money transferred into her account, which totalled $70,000.
She also made EFTPOS patient refund transactions, to the tune of $142,630.
However $175,215 worth of eftpos transactions failed to go through when the bank provider flagged with the practice that some of the ‘patient refunds’ were going into the same bank account.
Crow prosecutor Peri Cardiff said when a staff member raised the issue with her she fobbed it off as spam and that she would deal with the email.
However, due to her demeanour, staff became suspicious and flagged the situation with Dr Duncan Campbell, who owns the specialist Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Service.
When Dr Campbell spoke to Marshall, Ms Cardiff said she admitted to making the eftpos transactions because she wanted to buy a property for herself and her children.
She denied any further offending and promised to pay the money back, however an audit of the books soon uncovered the full extent of her deceit.
Ms Cardiff said the fraud marked a serious escalation of Marshall’s offending, noting she was on a two-year community-based order for a fraud that took place in Moree.
While the practice manager for the NSW clinic, the court was told Marshall got the login details of a number of doctors and began forging her own drug prescriptions for Panadeine Forte.
Ms Cardiff said when police began investigating, Marshall resigned and moved to Toowoomba, and less than a year later, she began committing the same crime.
Given the egregious breach of trust and seriousness of the crime, Ms Cardiff said Marshall should spend at least one year behind bars.
Barrister David Jones KC said Marshall should only serve six months of a head sentence, successfully arguing there were a number of factors at play that should lower her sentence.
He said the single mother was addicted to Panadeine Forte and was trying to rebuild her life in Toowoomba after fleeing an alleged domestic violence relationship.
Mr Jones said Marshall was owed $30,000 in child support and was trying to clear her debts so she could save for a home over her and her children’s heads.
He notes she’d paid back 95 per cent of what she stole from the business and would soon pay the remainder.
Marshall’s new employer and colleagues tendered a number of reference letters to the court in support of her.
Addressing her former employer and colleagues in court, Marshall apologised and said she took responsibility for any financial harm or stress she caused.
Marshall was sentenced to serve nine months of a five-year jail term, to be suspended for five years upon her release.
She was ordered to pay the outstanding compensation, $8642, within 14 days.
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Originally published as Melinda Mary Marshall jailed for stealing $216k from Toowoomba practice
