Allana Flanagan, Shane Sawyer convicted of rorting $100,000 from the National Redress Scheme

Two former Gold Coast residents have been sentenced for rorting a scheme set up to compensate victims of institutional abuse. Here’s how they managed to convince administrators to hand over the cash.

Former Pimpama resident Allana Catherine Flanagan, 30, currently of Birkdale. Picture: Facebook

A former Gold Coast resident has avoided jail after admitting to helping a man rort $100,000 from the National Redress Scheme for survivors of institutional abuse.

Birkdale woman Allana Catherine Flanagan, 30, appeared in Southport District Court on March 4 where she pleaded guilty to a charge of obtaining a financial benefit by deception.

Co-defendant Shane Vincent Sawyer, who is believed to be Flanagan’s former partner, was sentenced on the same charge last December.

The court heard the pair’s offending was committed between May 19 and December 13, 2021, when Flanagan was residing at Pimpama.

Sawyer, aided and abetted by Flanagan, hatched a plan to lodge an application with the scheme in the name of Sawyer’s brother, the court heard.

Over a period of about six months, Sawyer contacted the scheme’s administrators eight times purporting to be his brother.

Shane Vincent Sawyer, Flanagan’s co-defendant. Picture: File

In the background, Flanagan acted as Sawyer’s adviser and confidante in ways including helping him to set up a bank account that would be difficult to trace to him.

The $100,000 was received into the new bank account – which the scheme’s administrator’s believed belonged to Sawyer’s brother – on December 13, 2021, and 16 days later, it was all gone, ferreted into a series of other accounts.

Two days prior to the receipt of the money, the defendants exchanged messages on social media discussing what they would spend their illicit windfall on: in vitro fertilisation treatments, shopping trips for fancy clothes and pampering at a day spa.

Crown prosecutor Sam Knight described Flanagan’s role in the offending as significant.

“It was a premeditated and protracted course of conduct,” he said.

Former Pimpama resident Allana Catherine Flanagan, 30, currently of Birkdale. Picture: Facebook

“The defendant was highly involved in planning and advising [Sawyer].”

The court heard Flanagan was well-acquainted with the courts, predominantly for drug, property, and dishonesty type offending, which had seen her spend “notable periods” on remand in 2022 and 2023.

Flanagan’s defence was largely founded upon a psychological assessment which found there was a causal link between the defendant’s diagnosis of complex PTSD and the offending, as it left the defendant “highly vulnerable to coercion”.

Defence counsel Tracy Thorp further submitted prison would be more onerous for her client because of an additional neurological condition affecting Flanagan’s ability to speak, which manifested itself in 2023 in response to significant domestic violence (also the cause of the complex PTSD).

Flanagan was placed on two years’ probation and a $1000, two-year good-behaviour bond.

Like Sawyer, she was ordered to repay her share of the $100,000.