Zara Xenitopoulos: Melbourne mum jailed over crime spree

A Melbourne mum-of-five started taking drugs to cope with the stress of homeschooling during lockdown.

Zara Xenitopoulos, 40, says homeschooling her kids during the Covid pandemic drove her to becoming a heavy drug user. Picture: Supplied

A doting mum-of-five who took up drugs amid the stress of homeschooling her kids during the pandemic will spend six more months behind bars over a string of property offences.

Zara Xenitopoulos, 40, appeared briefly at the Heidelberg Magistrates Court by video link from jail on Monday, where she was handed a total of seven months jail, plus an 18 month community corrections over a series of crimes she committed to fund her habit.

Xenitopoulos, of Kingsville, was also ordered to pay her victims nearly $5000 in restitution.

Her lawyer, Sam Norton, hit out at a plagiarised article published by The Daily Mail online, with the headline: “Meet the mother who would rather remain in JAIL than return to homeschooling her kids – here’s why she made the unthinkable choice”.

Zara Xenitopoulos, 40, faced Heidelberg Magistrates' Court on a string of drug-related property offences. Picture: Supplied

The Daily Mail did not have a reporter attend court on Monday, or last week, and Mr Norton said the inaccurate article, plagiarised from a Leader story, was now circulating among Xenitopoulos’s family and social circles.

Magistrate Dominic Lennon said he “took into account” the unfair damage done to her reputation by The Daily Mail.

Xenitopoulos’s crimes included selling 31 Asus laptops to Cash Converters at Prahran on behalf of a criminal associate, with the promise she would get to keep three laptops for her daughters to use.

An unknown thief had stolen those laptops, and more, from a small Catholic school at Templestowe just days earlier, leaving them out of pocket $38,000.

Xenitopoulos also used stolen credit card to buy a $10,000 mountain bike from a suburban bike shop, leaving it out of pocket when the bank cancelled the transaction.

When detectives confronted her over another bank card fraud, she said she had “no explanation for any of this” but also said the price of her favourite drugs had gone up during the pandemic.

She also broke into apartment building storage cages in Heidelberg and Port Melbourne.

Mr Lennon warned Xenitopoulos the courts had run out of patience with her, and that she would likely be sent back to prison if she broke the law after her release early next year.