Con woman Maria Virgili avoids jail for ripping off elderly men
The second of two Central Coast con women, who pleaded guilty to ripping off elderly men of thousands of dollars, has been sentenced.
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A con woman who befriended elderly men before ripping them off thousands of dollars has narrowly avoided jail.
Maria Anne Virgili, of the Central Coast, was sentenced to one year and 10 months jail but was spared time behind bars with a Judge ordering the sentence to be served by way of intensive correction in the community.
She was also ordered to perform 300 hours of community work.
Virgili and her partner of 13 years Aruna Devi Gould pleaded guilty to ripping off two elderly men they befriended to the tune of $51,900.
Facts tendered in both matters reveal the pair befriended the men before asking for loans they would never pay back or for money they needed to get cars repaired, travel or fictitious medical procedures.
Virgili pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining financial advantage by deception.
She was sentenced in Gosford District Court last week, in which she was also ordered her pay back $35,000 to one of her victims.
Police alleged in previous court appearances there were up to four possible victims, with amounts totalling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But after two separate trials failed to go ahead, for various reason, since their arrest in 2015 the pair agreed to plead guilty to fraud.
Gould was sentenced in January to a maximum penalty of five years jail with a non-parole period of three years and nine months after a judge found her lack of remorse “abhorrent” and “offensive”.
She was given a further nine months jail in October after another victim came forward.
Virgili’s sentence, meanwhile, will expire on September 2021.