Joel Cheeseman: Merivale fraudster caught drink driving in Cronulla
Justin Hemmes’ former construction boss landed himself in trouble - only weeks after he narrowly avoided jail for fleecing the Merivale hospitality empire of hundreds of thousands of dollars and gambling it all away.
St George Shire Standard
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A man who narrowly avoided jail for fleecing Sydney pub king Justin Hemmes out of $230,000 was caught drink driving and driving while disqualified only weeks later.
Former construction boss Joel Cheeseman, 30, was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment to be served in the community at Downing Centre Local Court on August 21 last year for authorising false invoices to Hemmes’ Merivale amounting to a whopping $229,811.
The invoices were duly paid out by pub baron Hemmes between August 2017 and October 2018 and subsequently gambled away by Cheeseman.
Just weeks after Cheeseman barely escaped full-time jail he was pulled over in a black Range Rover near Cronulla in September and caught mid-range drink driving at more than twice the legal limit with a result of 0.120.
“Police were conducting stationary random breath testing and a roadside test was conducted which returned a positive result for alcohol,” police facts stated.
“In relation to his drinking the accused stated that he consumed four schooners of beer throughout the afternoon and into the evening, and did not consume any food.”
He was then busted driving while suspended at Cronulla 7/11 only weeks later on November 16.
“The accused had recently been charged with mid-range drink driving and knew his licence was suspended at the time of driving,” police facts stated.
At Sutherland Local Court on Thursday Magistrate Les Mabbutt sentenced Cheeseman to a two-year community corrections order, a six-month driving disqualification, a 12-month interlock order and a $1500 fine.
“It’s your decision to drink and drive, and you take a great risk driving anywhere when driving while suspended,” Mr Mabbutt said.
“Otherwise this is your first major traffic offence and your only other record is that for which you are now serving the intensive corrections order.”
Cheeseman is also required to perform 200 hours of community service under the terms of his intensive corrections order and agreed to pay Merivale back every cent he stole in NSW Supreme Court civil proceedings before he was sacked.
He is also prohibited from gambling for the term of the order.
Agreed facts tendered to Downing Centre Local Court revealed the rugged tradie had worked in construction for 10 years, and was on a handsome wage of about $2400 per week with Merivale.
But at the time of his sentence last August he owed $50,000 in credit card and personal debts to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
He had also found himself in the red with illegal bookies.
During his time with the hospitality giant Cheeseman was delegated to authorise payment to sub-contractors for amounts up to $100,000, the facts state.
On June 16, 2017 he sent an invoice from a sub-contractor Corinium Quoile Pty Ltd to Merivale IT department asking for its format to be converted from a PDF to word document.
Then on August 2 he submitted another invoice, purporting to be from the same company, which he had personally signed and authorised for payment.
This time he had altered the document to include his own bank details.
That meant $46,725.80 was duly transferred into his personal account, funds Merivale believed were going to the sub-contractor.
Over the coming months Cheeseman submitted four more false invoices in the name of Corinium Quoile, each bearing his bank details, raking in $229,811.88.
On May 2, 2019 he was hauled into a meeting with Merivale executives and spilled the beans.
“At that meeting, (Cheeseman) admitted to creating and submitting the false invoices … He acknowledged that the amount he obtained was over $200,000,” the facts state.
“(He) stated that he had gambled all of the funds he obtained with illegal bookies and was in debt to them.”