David Stakic fronts court over nearly $3m Fawkner Airport Motor Inn con job

Two con artists befriended Melbourne motel operators and tricked them into handing over nearly $3m to help fund a High Court case.

Fawkner Airport Motor Inn, now under new management and trading under a different name, where fraudsters David Stakic and Apostolos Lapatis befriended the business owners Robin and Roslyn Nagorcka.

Two silver-tongued motel guests tricked the business owners into giving them nearly $3m to fund an ongoing court case, details of which they claimed were suppressed.

The then-owners of Fawkner Airport Motor Inn, Robin and Roslyn Nagorcka, were so convinced with the conmen’s concocted story that they borrowed more than $1m from family and friends after running out of cash.

David Stakic and his friend Apostolos Lapatis befriended the couple while staying at their motor inn and fleeced them out of $2.9m over a four-year period, between December 2013 and January 2018.

Stakic, 72, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment on a charge of obtaining property by deception when he appeared in the County Court on Tuesday.

The motel owners were conned out of almost $3m.

Lapatis, 54, was jailed for four years on a similar charge in September 2023.

Court documents show Lapatis gained the trust of the Nagorckas in 2013 and convinced them Stakic — who stayed at the motor inn with his wife for six months — was a property developer who had his assets and money stolen by an identity theif.

Lapatis told them Stakic was involved in a very expensive High Court case to retrieve his assets that required the payment of daily court fees.

When the Nagorckases began to run low on funds during 2015, Lapatis and Stakic encouraged them to borrow from family and friends.

The highest amount the couple borrowed was just over $1m, from Robin Nagorckas’ brother Terence and his wife Cheryl, between 2015 and 2018.

Only $25,600 was recovered after one of the lenders went to court and obtained an order for repayment.

Judge Michael McInerney said unlike Lapatis who was a convicted thief and fraudster — who had 76 prior convictions and had been to jail three times prior to conning the motel operators — it was Stakic’s first time before the court.

The judge said how the motel operators fell for Lapatis and Stakic’s bluff was beyond his ken.

“Even though the victims were clearly questioned on a number of occasions by their friends and associates whom they’d obtained money from, ultimately the phrase abject ‘stupidity’ is the only phrase I can describe the victims’ actions in this matter,” he said.

Stakic will be eligible for parole after serving 20 months.