Lawyer Mark Leo O’Brien fighting legal bill for $6 million charity fraud case

Lawyer Mark Leo O’Brien, who is in jail for ripping off charities to the tune of $6 million, is fighting not to pay a massive legal bill from the case.

Kerry Packer, pictured with Geoff Harvey (left) had $12 million in gold stolen from him.

Locked-up lawyer Mark Leo O’Brien is fighting from prison to stop an eye-watering bill after he ripped off millions of dollars from charity.

O’Brien defrauded hospitals and charities out of $6 million which his dead clients had left as donations in their wills.

Therese and Mark O’Brien arriving at court in December last year. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Joel Carrett

He and his wife Therese lived large on the misappropriated funds, buying a stunning home in the city’s east and dropping $50,000 on furniture alone.

But it all came crashing down when an audit exposed the missing millions and the pair were convicted earlier this year.

O’Brien was sentenced to prison for dishonestly obtain by deception, and his wife was ordered to complete her sentence for dealing with the proceeds of crime in the ­community.

But the Law Society isn’t done with the O’Briens yet.

It picked up the bill for the defrauded charities while the couple was ­before the courts. O’Brien has since paid them back but the ­society claims he’s come up short by up to $631,000 in interest — and they want compensation.

The lawyer is fighting them, though.

Documents released by the Supreme Court show O’Brien is willing to admit he and his wife were fraudulent but he doesn’t believe they should pay the compensation.

O’Brien will serve at least six years in prison.

He is not associated with defamation lawyer Mark O’Brien of Mark O’Brien Legal.

B AND E SUSPECT IN GOLD HEIST

The theft of media mogul Kerry Packer’s gold is yet another example of how nothing happens in Sydney without the all-powerful NSW Crime Commission knowing about it.

Kerry Packer (right) with son James

In the hunt through its archives this week, The Daily Telegraph online revisited the exclusive story by Janet Fife-Yeomans from 2013 when she revealed the identity of the notorious safecracker who police believe snatched the gold bullion — now worth over $12 million — from Mr Packer’s Park St office in 1995.

Detectives worked on the theory that the safecracker, who boasted to cops that the B and E tattooed on his penis really read Breaking and Entering, had learned about the gold in pillow talk with Pat Wheatley, Packer’s loyal secretary for years who lived in a unit in the same block as the charming thief.

AUSSIE PRISONS ON SCREEN

A real-life version of Orange is the New Black is set for Australian TV this year.

Confidential understands production has begun on a new prison series called Australia Behind Bars, which is being produced by ITV.

The show will provide an inside look at prison life for some of NSW’s hardened criminals, and will include interviews with prisoners, in a similar format to popular documentaries already made overseas.

Central to the show will be the country’s largest women’s prison at Dillwynia in Sydney’s west. The maximum security Wellington Correctional Centre will also feature. “The inmates range from murderers, with case files marked ‘never to be released’, to those who are spending their first night behind bars,” ITV head David Mottsaid.

The series is expected to hit TV screens from August.