Fake tradie Tevita Tiliti Ungounga attempts to appeal sentence

A notorious fake tradie who ripped off customers in Sydney and Wollongong by more than $280k has tried to appeal his jail sentence. Find out the latest.

Serial liar and conman Tevita Tiliti Ungounga.

Dodgy “tradie” Tevita Tiliti Ungounga has made an attempt to appeal his sentence a month after the conman was jailed for more than three years for ripping off customers by more than $282,650.

At Parramatta District Court on Tuesday, an appeal hearing was scheduled but was withdrawn, meaning the sentence for 3 ½ years in jail still stands for Ungounga, who will be deported to Tonga after he has served his time behind bars.

Ungounga carried out shoddy and incomplete work on the properties of seven homeowners between 2020 and 2023.

His damage stretched from Carlingford, Earlwood and Liberty Grove in Sydney, to Stanwell Park in Wollongong, when he conned residents to hand over wads of cash to start unfinished backyard and interior renovations.

The 57-year-old married father-of-10 has never held a NSW Fair Trading contractor licence.

The repeat offender had already been convicted and fined in 2017, and received an intensive correction order in March 2021, for the same offences.

Yet he offended while he was on bail in 2021.

In February when a hearing was scheduled, Ungounga pleaded guilty to five counts of contract to do residential building work without a licence, four counts of doing residential building work when unlicensed, four counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and three counts of doing residential building work without insurance as prescribed.

On April 10, he was sentenced to jail with a non-parole period of two years and six months, making him eligible for parole on October 25, 2025 (back dated from April 26 last year when he was in custody).