NSW fraud: White collar criminals Matthew Hanks, Susan Reed, Mark Leo O’Brien, Graeme Miller, Angie Tsai, Luke Adamson, Simon Anquetil, Sunny Sunny

From a disgraced surf life saving boss to a Commonwealth Bank employee who swindled millions, these are some of NSW’s most shocking and brazen fraudsters. Read the full list.

Everyone has a mental image of what the typical crook might look like.

But every so often a scam artist comes along who reminds us of just how deceiving appearances can be.

These swindlers often seem to have it all — they are successful, hardworking and wealthy, but they are also experts at manipulation.

Every year, fraudsters and scammers steal millions from their unsuspecting victims.

According to statistics from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), this year alone over $257 million have been lost to scammers in Australia.

By far most common way unsuspecting Aussies are swindled is through investment scams, with $193 million lost this year.

But police are doing their best to stop these crooks, with a spokeswoman from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics & Research (BOCSAR) reporting a downward trend in these types of offences.

“The trend is down, with there being an 8.4 per cent decrease per year over the (past) three years,” the spokeswoman said.

“But it is important to note with data relating to fraud that many incidents of fraud are not reported to police, and may be reported to (other) agencies … such as banks and the ACCC.”

Here are some of the most brazen NSW fraudsters and scammers convicted over the past two years.

Matthew Hanks

Matthew Hanks.

A disgraced surf life saving NSW boss told a court he “felt dead” after being caught defrauding the charity of nearly $2 million.

Matthew Hanks, aged 52, pleaded guilty to six counts of fraud over an eight-year period.

His crimes helped fund his millionaire’s luxury lifestyle of two mansions and a yacht.

In court, Hanks pleaded guilty to using a fictitious name to create a false invoice for $121,000 worth of construction work done at the Port Macquarie Surf Club. He ­altered the name on the cheque to resemble his own then deposited the money into his bank account.

He also used inflated invoices when buying and selling cars for the organisation. There were 55 cars involved which netted Hanks over $1,318,000.

And Hanks admitted defrauding the organisation of $400,000 by invoicing the SLSNSW printing work to his own company, “See Hear Speak”, when he was actually subcon­tracting the work out to cheaper ­operators and pocketing the ­difference.

“I felt dead. I felt like everything had been was being taken away,” Hanks said of the time he was caught and resigned.

In February, Hanks was convicted and sentenced to a maximum of three years and three months behind bars, with a non-parole period of one year and seven months.

Susan Reed

Susan Reed (in 2004). Picture: Robert McKell.

A Maitland pensioner and serial scammer, who took out an ad in the paper describing herself as a “lonely lady, looking for companionship”, duped yet another victim.

Susan Reed, 66, has been committing fraud offences for more than four decades, a court heard.

In Newcastle District Court, the 66-year-old was found to be swindling her victims “for greed”, knowingly setting out to take their cash, as she spun a web of lies.

Reed’s latest victim, a 74-year-old man, was duped out of $120,000 after his wife had recently passed away. This victim answered the lonely hearts ad put out by Reed in July 2017, in the personal section of the paper.

Her ad read “lonely lady, recently widowed, seeking companionship, honest, loving and loyal”.

Judge Tim Gartelmann said Reed’s fraud was “unsophisticated”, but she did it repeatedly over a long period.

“She has been committing offences since her early 20s and done it many times since, and has been repeatedly in prison from fraud,” Judge Gartelmann said.

Reed pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.

In December 2021, the pensioner was sentenced to three years jail with a non-parole period of one year and six months.

Mark Leo O’Brien

Mark Leo O'Brien. Picture: Joel Carrett.

A Sydney lawyer, who ripped $6 million from charities to buy a Bondi mansion, has been jailed for a decade despite a court hearing his “sociodemographic background” means he won’t fit with other prisoners.

Solicitor Mark Leo O’Brien pleaded guilty to 10 counts of misappropriating more than $6 million — money his dead clients had bequeathed to charity.

When one woman died in 2015, O’Brien was tasked with passing on $1.3 million to charitable society for people with paraplegia or quadriplegia and a society for ophthalmologists.

A further $100,000 was left to St Vincent De Paul and the Prince of Wales Hospital.

O’Brien took a share of the fortune for himself and covered his tracks with false documents.

Over time the solicitor’s deceit grew more sophisticated, the court heard, and was used to fund a flashy lifestyle.

He leased a BMW, gave $50,000 to one of their children and funded a credit card that was used in the law firm. His children would later be given hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest-free loans.

In March 2021, Judge Sutherland handed Mark Leo O’Brien 10 years in prison with at least six years before parole. He will be eligible for release in 2027.

Graeme Walter Miller

Graeme Miller. Picture: Adam Yip.

A financial adviser who stole $1.8 million from his clients “lost his moral compass” shortly after his daughter committed suicide, a court heard.

Graeme Miller, aged 60, received a hefty jail sentence for his self-managed superfund Ponzi scheme

Judge Gregory Woods called the scheme, which ran between 2013 and 2017, “a cruel and deceitful betrayal … leading to financial disaster”.

The victims were couples in their 60s and 70s who trusted Miller to invest their assets as they settled into retirement.

He misappropriated funds including $950,000, $380,000, and $250,000 from five couples, which they had worked for over decades, the court heard.

In July 2020, Miller was sentenced to six years in prison and he was ordered to pay back more than $1.7 million to his victims.

Angie Tsai

Angie Tsai.

A Sydney Commonwealth Bank employee who took millions from customers has been jailed for at least two years after a judge declared he could not be soft on white collar crime.

CBA teller Angie Tsai admitted to Downing Centre District Court 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.

The bank was affected overall to the tune of $3.5 million, the court heard.

Judge John Pickering SC said people who commit white collar crime should not get off scot-free despite her lawyers having pushed for her to avoid jail.

“You can’t seriously allow people who are employed by banks to steal $3.5 million and be treated lightly,” Judge Pickering said.

In October 2021, Judge Pickering sentenced Tsai to three years and three months jail with a non-parole period of two years.

Luke Adamson

Luke Adamson. Picture: Monique Harmer.

A northern beaches solicitor, who was once was considered for a job as a magistrate, defrauded clients out of $1.49 million and spent large amounts of money on wining and dining colleagues, a court has heard.

Luke Adamson, 56, had a raft of desperate clients at the time he misappropriated their funds at his Manly and Parramatta practices over a number of years.

It is understood many of his allegedly defrauded clients included disabled people, the elderly and also people in prison.

Adamson removed the funds from their trust accounts for a number of years before complaints were made to the NSW Law Society.

He told the court the expenses were not used to benefit him and he rather spent on effectively running his practice, regional law society events he organised, his children’s school fees and professional functions.

“I was a good lawyer but I was a terrible administrator,” he told the court.

Adamson pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud and was jailed for a maximum of four years, with a two-year non-parole period and was ordered to pay back $198,000 compensation to one victim.

Sunny Sunny

Sunny Sunny.

Armed with a cheque book and a silver tongue, an unassuming western Sydney student conned his way into luxury cars and “porn-star experiences”, and convinced people to part with bars of gold.

For six months in 2020, brothels, car modifiers and gold sellers were ­receiving troubling calls from their banks about bouncing cheques.

Cheques for tens of thousands of dollars, being cut by Gurdeeta Singh, Edward Zinck, Sandeep Singh, Ahmad Abbas, weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.

Each of the deadbeats had the same sweptback hair, the same soft voice and arching eyebrows, but no one could find them — their phone numbers were all cancelled, their letters were being delivered to other peoples’ addresses.

The varied and sophisticated con jobs were all the product of one Sunny Sunny, a 32-year-old Indian man.

On June 28, Sunny was sentenced on 15 “premeditated and sophisticated” charges, including stealing the Range Rover, false documents and dishonestly ­obtained by deception.

“The community needs to be protected from shysters and that’s the only name I can think appropriate to label Mr Sunny,” Magistrate Greg Grogan said.

Sunny was convicted and will spend almost two years behind bars, be he will be eligible for parole on January 1, 2023.