David Stakic and Apostolos Lapatis front Court of Appeal

Two crooks befriended the operators of a Melbourne motel and bled them and their wider family dry after tricking them into handing over nearly $3m to fund a court case.

The jail terms of con artists David Stakic and Apostolos Lapatis have been increased following an appeal by the Crown.

Two con artists have been resentenced to longer prison terms for tricking operators of a Melbourne motel into handing over nearly $3m to help fund them a High Court case.

David Stakic, 72, and his friend Apostolos Lapatis, 54, were staying at the Fawkner Airport Motor Inn when they swindled the then business owners Robin and Roslyn Nagorcka between December 2013 and January 2018.

They concocted a story that they needed money to fund a High Court case — details of which were suppressed — and the Nagorckas were so convinced that they roped in family and friends to contribute more than $1m.

A family member even received a call from a man who identified himself as “Frank Frys

QC”, who informed him that he was a judge at Werribee Court and encouraged him to

continue paying for the court case.

Lapatis, dubbed the “prime mover” in the elaborate scheme, was sentenced in September 2023 to a minimum of three years and two years’ imprisonment while Stakic was ordered to serve a minimum non parole of one year and eight months.

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.

The Crown appealed the sentences, saying they were manifestly inadequate given the amount involved and the duration of offending.

The total sentence on Lapatis of four years’ and nine months’ imprisonment was “startlingly low”, the Crown argued.

In its judgment released on Tuesday, the Cout of Appeal set aside the sentences and ordered that Lapatais serve a minimum of four years and six months and Stakic two years and four months.

Their total sentences were increased to six years and nine months and three years and six months respectively.

Apart from the Nagorckas, Lapatis duped his friend Daniel Ward to obtain $21,725 on the pretext of funding a property dispute in Greece and a further $146,050 from Mr Wards’ friend.

Lapatis also fraudulently obtained $16,930 from his taxi driver and another person. Robin and Roslyn Nagorcka, Mr Ward and the taxi driver depleted their savings as a result of Lapatis’ brazen and manipulative scheme.

“There was no evidence concerning the precise amount that Lapatis derived from the scheme

to defraud Mr and Mrs Nagorcka, but — by any estimation — the identified advantage

obtained which stood at just shy of $3 million was substantial indeed,” the Court of Appeal judges said.

“And this was offending committed by a man possessed of a criminal history which included offences of dishonesty for which he had previously been imprisoned,” they said of Lapatis.

Between 2001 and 2015, the judges said Lapatis had been convicted of no less than 63 charges of obtaining property by deception and his latest offending was a “substantial escalation”of his crimes.