Qld’s fraudsters and their elaborate schemes revealed
Their white-collar crimes have left many in ruin and caused untold emotional and financial stress. Meet some of the state’s convicted fraudsters and the schemes they used to dupe their employers, investors, customers and taxpayers.
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They are the convicted fraudsters who have swindled millions from Queensland’s families, companies and the Federal Government.
Here is a list of some of the region’s hustlers whose elaborate ruses were ultimately undone and have been laid bare in Queensland’s courts over the past 18 months.
Philip Bruce Northam
Convicted
Philip Bruce Northam was described as a key player in an elaborate multimillion-dollar tax evasion scheme.
Northam, 60, was sentenced to six years’ jail last month after pleading guilty to conspiring to defraud the Commonwealth.
He was paid $220,000 for his work recruiting accountants and promoting the asset-stripping scheme, which operated for two years from July 1999 and May 2001, and was designed to leave companies in a position where they could not pay their taxes.
Fifteen companies took part in the scheme which involved offshore bank accounts and companies, including some based in Vanuatu and resulted in a $4.59 million tax shortfall.
His co-schemers Robin David Huston, Ian Sidney Henke, Brian Francis Fox and Clarence Lawry Marae were all charged and later jailed for conspiring to defraud the Commonwealth.
Northam, who was living in Vanuatu, was not arrested until 2017 when he returned to Queensland to receive treatment for cancer.
He will be eligible for parole in August next year.
Ryan McCarthy
Convicted
Ryan McCarthy swindled $558,000 by convincing unemployed people that they had won jobs in a “despicable” job scam that left his victims broken.
The 27-year-old blindsided 52 people from five states as part of the scheme that began when he was 23 to pay off a drug debt, and continued over 10 months in 2015 and 2016.
McCarthy would post ads on online job sites, conduct 20-minute phone interviews and then tell candidates they had been successful.
He would then ask for their bank card details, driver’s licences and tax file numbers before lodging false income tax returns.
In harrowing statements read in court, victims spoke of how they were so convinced they had secured jobs, they went out and bought clothes and turned up at job locations for their first day of work, only to find out they had been lied to.
McCarthy pleaded guilty to 106 charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception, dealing in identification information and attempting to obtain financial advantage by deception.
He was ordered to serve 18 months of the five and a half year jail term behind bars.
Ho Man Stephen Yeung
Convicted
“Cunning” serial conman Ho Man Stephen Yeung ripped off a dozen victims including fans of musicians Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars by pretending to sell them tickets online.
The 35-year-old former hospitality worker from Underwood swindled more than $200,000 from his victims between 2015 and 2018 including taking $2100 from four music fans he found through classified websites.
He also swindled $157,768 from buy-now pay-later service Oxipay and about $50,000 from a Sydney man he met on an online car forum for enthusiasts of Lotus Elite cars.
The money went to feed his gambling addiction, a Brisbane court heard.
Judge Craig Chowdhury said Yeung’s actions of ripping off eager concertgoers by pretending to have tickets and tricking them into sending money for tickets he never sent were “really mean in nature”.
Yeung pleaded guilty to the fraud and was sentenced to five-and-a-half years jail.
Catherine Maree Peters
Convicted
Catherine Maree Peters’s former employers were left emotionally and financially scarred when she stole $400,000 from their businesses to feed her gambling habit.
Peters was working in accounts for Deagon IGA in 2014 when she stole $359,000 over nine months by pocketing sums of cash “daily”.
She left the business after being confronted over the missing money and took a job as payroll manager of a steel construction business at Redland Bay.
There she used three false employee names without tax file numbers to pay herself $39,000 of fake wages – all while she was aware that police were investigating her theft from the supermarket.
She pleaded guilty to stealing and fraud charges in Brisbane District Court in November last year and was sentenced to six years’ jail.
Janet Nadj
Convicted
Janet Nadj, 37, was working as a trusted senior property manager for Cornerstone Realty at Sunnybank when she began stealing rental and bond money she was meant to forward to the Residential Tenancies Authority.
The senior real estate agent swindled $87,000 in rent money from the company to feed her gambling and ice addiction.
A Brisbane court heard she manipulated the trust accounting system to hide her offending by creating false entries showing money she obtained had been banked.
When she was exposed, Nadj wrote a letter of apology to her employer and offered up her 300 hours of annual leave as compensation.
It was not enough to keep her from serving time and last month she pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and was sentenced to three years’ jail.
Daniel Peter Logan
Convicted
A couple were forced to downsize and sell their family home after a disgraced financial planner conned them out of $360,000 so he could pay off his credit cards and feed an online gambling addiction.
Daniel Peter Logan was in “extreme financial stress” when he took the Brisbane couple on as clients while working as a planner at financial services group Anne Street Partners in 2013, a Brisbane court heard.
Over five years, Logan stole money from the couple’s self-managed super account, enticed the couple into buying properties which he mismanaged and then falsified documents to pretend their investments were increasing in value.
The money was gambled away on online betting websites, used to pay his Anytime Fitness and Foxtel memberships and $10,000 went to paying off his credit card.
Logan was sentenced to six years’ jail after pleading guilty to the single count of fraud.
Bradley Keith Silver
Convicted
Former company director Bradley Keith Silver “callously manipulated” 12 victims in a $4.39 million fraudulent investment scheme.
At Silver’s sentence in September last year, the court was told it was a sophisticated marketing exercise designed to fool a bank and vulnerable investors, who did not see any of their money invested as they were promised.
Silver, 31, created false documents and issued monthly statements to victims who were left with serious mental health issues and concerns about becoming homeless as a result of his actions.
The stress of losing his life savings took a heavy toll on elderly pensioner Kevin Mahon, who thought he would lose his house, before he had a massive stroke.
Judge Richards sentenced Silver to a maximum eight years in jail after pleading guilty to seven aggravated fraud charges and six counts of dishonestly using his company director’s position with intent to gain.
Tony Mufutau Oluwatoyn Bakare
Convicted
Queensland doctor Tony Mufutau Oluwatoyn Bakare was sentenced to four years’ jail after being found guilty of making over $360,000 worth of false claims to Medicare.
Bakare, 50, made more than 4000 fake claims between April 2014 and August 2017 for patients he claimed to have treated either while he was overseas or after they had died.
Bakare pleaded not guilty to a charge of obtaining financial advantage by deception at the start of his trial on Monday but a jury found him guilty of the crime in February.
The court was told that he had shown little remorse for the crime and that the doctor’s actions had diminished his previous good character.
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