Claudia Gelonese’s bridesmaids decline to comment as bride starts jail stint over fraud
The bridesmaids of the woman jailed after ripping off her boss — including an Insta-famous Bondi model — have gone to ground over the scandal.
Canberra Star
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The Insta-famous Bondi model who was a bridesmaid at the lavish wedding of now-jailed fraudster bride Claudia Gelonese remains tight-lipped about the scandal.
Model and Instagram influencer Julia Gelonese did not respond to a request for comment from the Canberra Star about the downfall of her serial fraudster relative.
Julia Gelonese boasts more than 44,000 Instagram followers, and was among the “stunning” bridal party at her sister’s harbourside wedding in August 2018.
The wedding was bankrolled by Claudia Gelonese’s brazen actions against her former Canberra boss, crimes which on Monday saw her bundled off for a four-month stint in the notoriously violent Alexander Maconochie Centre outside Canberra.
The Canberra Star can reveal Claudia Gelonese’s once picture-perfect life was already unravelling when she posed for lavish wedding photos in front of two Rolls Royces at Luna Park, her new husband Youssef at her side and her bridal party nearby.
Julia Gelonese did not respond to requests for comment yesterday, and another bridesmaid Margherita Garreffa, on Tuesday shut down her Facebook account when contacted for comment about her close friend’s downfall from glamorous bride to jailed fraudster.
The three had spent the morning of the wedding being pampered and snapping selfies at a Sydney day spa.
But court records show that just two days before the wedding, Gelonese’s former boss at Bright Bees Early Learning Centre in the Canberra, Amresh Kumar, cottoned on to the most brazen of Gelonese’s fraud.
Mr Kumar was baffled about why the busy centre was struggling financially.
In a search of the centre’s email accounts, Mr Kumar found Claudia Gelonese had been handing out her personal bank account details to parents, telling them to deposit fees into it instead of into the business’s account.
The low act came despite Mr Kumar having given Claudia Gelonese a $10,000 loan just two weeks earlier, when she confided in his that she was stressed and “urgently needed” the money to pay wedding bills.
The Tuesday after her wedding, the furniture hire company for Claudia Gelonese’s no-expenses spared wedding billed the company card $2970, on top of nearly $3400 she had already racked up.
View this post on InstagramIt’s cold outtt but I’m getting ready for summer in @seafollyaustralia 💥💥
A post shared by JULIA GELONESE (@juliagelonese) on
Nearly a year and a half on, Claudia Gelonese has only repaid $1000 of the loan, when she stuffed cash into an envelope and dropped it in Mr Kumar’s letterbox, falsely claiming she was leaving him $2000, court records show.
When confronted by police, Gelonese lied about her wrongdoing, claiming Mr Kumar had given her permission to use the company card.
“In an interview, (Gelonese) raised that she had been given permission to use the credit card via WhatsApp messenger from Mr Kumar,” court records say.
“Mr Kumar provided a printout of the WhatsApp messenger history between himself and the defendant … at no point in the text messages is the defendant given permission to use the credit card.”
Nearly a year and on from her glamorous day, Gelonese faces a minimum of four months inside Canberra’s Alexander Maconochie Centre.
In court on Monday, tears welled up when she told ACT Acting Chief Magistrate Glenn Theakston she would need more than a year after getting out of jail to start repaying the $7772 she rorted from Mr Kumar.