Fake tradie Tevita Tiliti Ungounga sentenced for ripping off customers in Sydney, Wollongong

A fake tradie who fleeced customers off by more than $280k will be deported to Tonga after inflicting shoddy and incomplete work on vulnerable homeowners’ properties in Sydney and Wollongong.

Tevita Tiliti Ungounga leaves Parramatta Local Court in 2022. He was placed in custody in 2023.

Fake tradie Tevita Tiliti Ungounga will be deported to Tonga after he serves more than three years in jail for ripping off customers $282,650 by inflicting shoddy and incomplete work on properties in Sydney and Wollongong.

The conman and serial liar carried out faulty work that threatened residents’ safety and drained their pockets between 2020 and 2023 when he convinced seven homeowners at Carlingford, Earlwood and Liberty Grove in Sydney, and Stanwell Park in Wollongong, to hand over wads of cash to start unfinished backyard and interior renovations.

That was despite the 57-year-old married father-of-10 adult children never holding a NSW Fair Trading contractor licence.

At Parramatta Local Court on Wednesday, Ungounga’s lawyer Michael Bellingham conceded his client had limited insight into his offences and did not have the capacity to pay fines.

“The impact on the victims is substantial, the impact on the community is substantial,’’ Mr Bellingham said.

Tevita Tiliti Ungounga lacked insight for his offences, a court heard.

The court heard the offences were aggravated and Ungounga had already been convicted and fined in 2017, and received an intensive correction order in March 2021, for the same offences.

But despite that he offended while he was on bail in 2021.

The court heard the shocking acts he carried out including at Earlwood in February and March 2023 when a woman forked out $19,600 after he promised to build a retaining wall only to construct a second wall without permission. The work turned her backyard into a rubbish tip.

He door knocked residents in the same suburb where he convinced a man the Colorbond fence at Highcliff Rd home “might kill somebody” if it wasn’t fixed and replaced with a sandstone structure.

Magistrate Joy Boulos told Ungounga via video link he could not “imagine the financial and emotional stress” he caused when he fleeced seven victims of their hard-earned money.

“Your brazen attitude is extraordinary,’’ she said.

“Nothing has deterred you whatsoever and you have defrauded people in excess of $220,000.’’

The court also heard he pulled off another ruse to get a Carlingford victim’s credit card details by telling him he was providing the information to a traffic control company to go to his property.

But after the victim reviewed his financial statement, he saw $680 was credited to Ivan’s Butchery at Chester Hill to buy two baked pigs.

When the victim raised this with the tradie, he told him the butcher’s brother was handling the traffic control so payment was made through the butcher.

However, the butcher owner confirmed he had no brothers and had no involvement with traffic control.

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.

Ms Boulos convicted Ungounga and backdated the sentence to April 26 last year when he was placed in custody. She sentenced him to 3 ½ years in prison with a non-parole period of two years and six months, making him eligible for parole on October 25, 2025.

Ungounga will be deported to Tonga after serving his sentence behind bars.

His lawyer told the court he wanted to live in Hawaii with his wife and four of his children but the US would not accept him.