Louise Lyel, Gus Nosti: City suits who’ve wound up in court
They are supposed to be the respectable and professional faces of corporate Australia. But not all are as squeaky clean as they may seem. These are the city suits who have wound up before the courts in the last 12 months.
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Several NSW businessmen and woman, lawyers and financial professionals have swapped the office for the courtroom in the last year after being caught up in various offences.
These are the city suits who have been before the courts in 2021.
Louise Lyel
A PR professional was sentenced to jail after stealing thousands of dollars from a Southern Highlands business.
Louise Lyel, 55, faced Moss Vale Court last year where she was sentenced for dishonestly gaining property by deception, dishonestly gaining financial advantage by deception, and larceny.
The Robertson resident had been working as a PR consultant for popular Berrima restaurant The Loch in 2019 when her employer noticed large unauthorised transactions on the company debit and credit cards.
Between late November 2019 and April 16 2020, Lyel spent more than $8000 of her employer’s money on a random assortment of goods.
She splashed the cash on a Samsung phone, a laptop, a laptop bag and keyboard, LG vacuum cleaner, soda stream gas bottles, a treadmill, crockery, aprons, shower caps, an electric heater, a bird cage, toys, CDs, heated towel dryer, milk frother, coffee machine, and a night at the Sheraton in Sydney.
She also spent hundreds on at least three items of bird art, according to court documents.
Magistrate Douglass sentenced Lyel to 12 months imprisonment with a seven month non-parole period.
Mark Leo O’Brien
A Sydney lawyer who misappropriated $6 million from charities to buy a Bondi mansion was jailed for a decade.
Solicitor Mark Leo O’Brien pleaded guilty to 10 counts of misappropriating more than $6 million that his dead clients had bequeathed to charity.
O’Brien’s wrongdoings unravelled when his law firm partner asked how the couple could afford a Bondi mansion given their prior home had sold for less than $1.5m.
The misappropriated funds have since been repaid, the court heard, but about $500,000 in interest remains outstanding to the charities.
Judge Sutherland handed Mark Leo O’Brien a sentence of 10 years in prison with at least six years before parole. He will be eligible for release in 2027.
Augustine ‘Gus’ Nosti
A prestigious Sydney college financial manager felt like a “high roller” when he put most of the $7.4 million he stole from his employer through the pokies.
Augustine ‘Gus’ Nosti’s gambling benders and lavish holidays over 14 years finally caught up with him last year, when he was sentenced by District Court Judge Karen Robinson to at least five and a half years in prison.
He had been the financial manager for Moriah College.
Having complete access to an eastern suburb college’s finances, Nosti transferred $3.4 million to himself across 363 separate transactions from December 2004. While between August 2015 and his resignation in March 2019, he redirected 39 GST tax refunds — worth $3.9 million — away from the school of 1650 students to himself.
The 58-year-old will serve an aggregate term of nine years in prison and will be eligible to apply for parole on February 24, 2027, after pleading guilty to five offences of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception.
Andrew Svenson
Landing a job at Sydney’s Lyric and Capitol Theatres might be a dream for many but for one convicted fraudster, it was a chance to steal almost $75,000.
Andrew Svenson, 56 began in the trusted role as ‘head of food and beverage operations’ at Foundation Theatres in October 2017, which operates Sydney’s Lyric and Capitol Theatres.
In the space of months in his new role, Svenson had crafted a way to scam tens of thousands of dollars from his new employer. Facts tendered to the court stated the company’s policy was for $50 notes from the night’s takings to be reserved to replenish an ATM machine in the theatre foyer, a task which often landed with Svenson.
Instead, the Rhodes senior manager would often steal portions, if not all, of the $50 notes reserved for the ATM machine. Court documents revealed that between January 2018 and February 2019, Svenson stole $74,590 as a result of his scheme.
He was convicted of a number of fraud offences, including steal property from employer, and sentenced to a two-year jail sentence to be served in the community and was ordered to repay the two victims $160,000 in total, and complete 150 hours community service.
Michael Pearse
An Australian man who defrauded “hundreds of thousands” of people in a multimillion-dollar text messaging scam was ordered to spend more than nine years in an American jail.
Michael Pearse from Sydney was extradited by the FBI to the US in early 2021 to face court over the fraud which involved sending thousands of unsolicited celebrity gossip, horoscopes, love tips and trivia to mobile phone users before charging them without their knowledge.
Even if the recipient tried to delete the spam they were still automatically charged up to US$9.99 a month, unless they noticed the cost obscurely listed on their bill.
Even then, consumers’ attempts to dispute the charges and obtain refunds were often unsuccessful.
Pearse, who was first charged in 2015, was ordered to hand over more than $13 million in cash as well as his interest in three properties in Australia and other high end assets, representing proceeds traceable to the fraud. He was sentenced to 109 months jail in 2021.
Angie Tsai
A Commonwealth Bank employee in Sydney who took millions from customers was jailed for at least two years after a judge declared he could not be soft on white collar crime.
Angie Tsai admitted to Downing Centre District Court that she siphoned the money in order to fund a lavish lifestyle she had lived with her ex-boyfriend before she was caught by internal investigators in 2019.
The 33-year-old, who pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception, took $500,000 from a dead customer’s account in 2014 and took more than $2 million from another customer who was overseas in 2015.
Tsai was sentenced to three years and three months jail, with a non-parole period of two years meaning she will be eligible for parole in December 2022.
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