Jessica Pakatyilla a.k.a. Jess Nutley guilty of helping to defraud ATO of nearly $50,000
A Gold Coast mother-of-one participated in a large-scale GST fraud that did the rounds on social media a few years back, as did the father of her child, a court has heard.
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A Gold Coast mother-of-one has narrowly avoided jail after she helped a third party defraud the tax office of almost $50,000 as part of a large-scale GST fraud that circulated on social media in 2022.
Surfers Paradise woman Jessica Alexis Pakatyilla, 25, also known by the surname Nutley, appeared in Southport District Court on Tuesday, where she pleaded guilty to a charge of dishonestly obtaining a gain.
The offence was committed between February and May 2022, the court heard.
Pakatyilla applied for an ABN and then allowed her MyGov account to be accessed by a third party, in order for six fraudulent business activity statements to be lodged.
As a result, Pakatyilla was credited with $49,700 in GST refunds, which she split 50–50 with the unnamed third party.
The court heard she would have received an additional $24,600 in fraudulent GST refunds, but the Australian Taxation Office, smelling a rat, froze her account.
Defence counsel Marcin Lazinski told the court his client had a number of factors in mitigation, including her total absence of prior criminal offending, and the significant assistance she provided investigators, which extended to providing a sworn statement identifying the others she worked in concert with.
Mr Lazinski said the offending was “unsophisticated and silly”.
“She wasn’t running a business, she was on benefits, so this was always going to end in tears,” he said.
Judge Nicole Kefford said offending such as Pakatyilla’s, which targeted our tax system, “puts at risk the very assistance the federal government gives to people like you who need assistance”.
She was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment but released immediately, conditional upon her entering into a two-year, $500 good-behaviour bond.
She was ordered to repay the $49,700.
The court heard the father of Pakatyilla’s three-year-old daughter had been jailed for almost identical offending as part of the GST fraud scheme.
Beenleigh man Benjamin West, 22, obtained a similar amount of money ($49,226) in exactly the same manner.
On February 25, he was sentenced in the Beenleigh District Court to the same orders as Pakatyilla, but made to serve six months behind bars, in light of the fact he did have a minor criminal history and was less co-operative with investigators.
In response to the scheme’s virulence in 2022, the ATO and other law enforcement agencies launched Operation Protego, an ATO-led investigation into large-scale GST fraud.
According to the Operation Protego website, Pakatyilla is the 16th person to be sentenced for participating in the illicit scheme.
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Originally published as Jessica Pakatyilla a.k.a. Jess Nutley guilty of helping to defraud ATO of nearly $50,000
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