Lutchmee and Troy Robinson fight to keep property as fraud case looms

A Gympie woman, accused of dodgy money transfers in her former job, and her husband are fighting to save their home as a costly criminal court case looms.

Troy and Lutchmee (Annie) Robinson have fought off an attempt by their former employer to put a freeze on their home, which they say needs to be sold to cover the six figure legal fees needed to fight allegations Mrs Robinson misappropriated funds from that same employer.

A Gympie woman, accused of defrauding her former employer of hundreds of thousands of dollars, is now fighting to keep that same employer’s hands off her home.

Lutchmee (also known as Annie) and Troy Jonathan Robinson are fighting attempts by T & L Byrne Excavations and Byrne Civil Projects to keep the $440,000 Gympie property from being sold.

Mrs Robinson, 48, has been accused of misappropriating or misapplying funds belonging to T & L Byrne Excavations.

She worked as an office manager for the company from February 2013 to September 2019, and Mr Robinson as a labourer and truck driver from April 2013 to April 2014.

Mrs Robinson has been accused defrauding the money through bank transfers to either her personal account, or a joint one with her partner.

The couple says they need to sell the home to pay their own six-figure legal fees to fight the accusations.

The companies are pleading for more $1.38 million from Mrs Robinson, and more than $288,000 from Mr Robinson.

According to published Queensland Supreme Court documents Mrs Robinson claimed in her defence that she and T & L Byrne’s only director “commenced an intimate relationship in 2016”.

Troy and Lutchmee (Annie) Robinson each worked for T & L Byrne Excavations between 2013 and 2019. Mrs Robinson is accused of having illegally transferred money from the company through bank accounts, a claim she denies saying the transfers were done with the director’s approval.

During this she opened an account “at the director’s suggestion, for the purposes of enabling money to be transferred … in a manner which would conceal the transfers from the company accountants, the director’s wife, and (Byrne Civil Projects)”.

All the payments were made with the director’s consent, she claimed.

The director has called these claims a “fabrication”.

The company lodged a caveat over the couple’s property in February saying $20,000 of the allegedly misappropriated money had been spent on the home in 2017.

The couple has owned the house since October 2008, more than four years before either started working for T & L Byrne.

The Robinsons want to sell the home and use part of the money to fund Mrs Robinson’s legal fees, estimated to be more than $150,000 from the case currently before the criminal court.

They are unable to do so while the caveat remains in place and in August, asked it be removed and the matter stayed until criminal charges against, them stemming from the allegations, were resolved.

Mr Robinson is estimated to be facing $219,000 in legal fees, including $131,000 for the fight over the property.

T & L Byrne Excavations and Byrne Civil projects were denied the ability to put a caveat over the Robinsons’ Gympie home but a request to freeze some of their assets is still yet to be ruled on.

He will require access to equity in his home to pay the fees.

This month, Justice Helen Bowskill removed the caveat saying there was “no evidence” before the courts any allegedly misappropriated money had been spent by the Robinsons on their home.

Given the Robinsons’ desire to sell it to cover legal fees, the fact they had no other property, the small size of the claim in comparison compared to the $440,000 home and that Mrs Robinson was willing to pay the $20,000 into her solicitor’s trust fund, further favoured the caveat’s removal.

Justice Bowskill put the brakes on a separate request to freeze $400,000 in the Robinsons’ assets, saying there remained too many unanswered questions.

She said a forensic account’s report showed when the couple became aware of the civil legal action against them “a total of $295,000 was removed from multiple ATMs” between January and June 2020.

This was “suspicious”, she said, but the companies’ delay of at least 10 months in asking for assets to be frozen was “unexplained” and they made no application to put a halt on any of the bank accounts in question.

Justice Bowskill said if the application was really about stopping any sale of the property, then it was not grounds for a freezing order to be made.

Given these unanswered questions Justice Bowskill said she would not make any ruling on freezing assets until further submissions were made.