Con artists: Sara Grasso fooled family and friends with her tales of her fantastic legal career

A LAVISH party at the stately Windsor Hotel was the high point of Sara Grasso's fantastic legal career, but like so much of her double life, it was all a big sham.

Sara Grasso, bogus lawyer

A LAVISH party at the stately Windsor Hotel was the high point of Sara Grasso's fantastic legal career.

But like so much of Grasso's extraordinary double life, the party to celebrate her admission to the Victorian Bar was a sham.

Grasso wore a barrister's wig, gown and jacket bought for $1440 from Ravensdales, the legal outfitters in Lonsdale Street, but the cheque bounced.

She arrived with her family in a stretched white limousine, but the limo company didn't get paid either.

Neither did the studio which provided a photographer and video cameraman to record the happy occasion.

Grasso told the 70 guests, who reportedly included several Melbourne lawyers, she thought she looked absolutely repulsive in her barrister's wig "but never mind - this is what I have to wear in court''.

She was also wearing an expensive necklace given to her by her jeweller boyfriend, who she later tricked out of $10,000 to pay for the function.

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Speeches were made by two young Melbourne University law students, who spoke in glowing terms of the woman who became their role model after they met her in the university library.

"I would always aspire to emulate her, until I realised the full extent of her achievements,'' said one of the budding lawyers who wished Grasso success in what would surely be "a lengthy and illustrious career at the Bar''.

But Grasso's many achievements were not all they seemed and her legal career was neither long nor illustrious.

A month later the party's guest of honour was arrested and charged with the first of many charges of deception as her life of lies gradually unravelled.

If she'd turned her talents to something else, like marketing, she'd probably be a millionaire

The bogus barrister may well have studied law at Melbourne University, but she was never enrolled there.

Despite that, she took notes in lectures and tutorials, was a regular in the law library and acquired enough knowledge of legal subjects, terminology and procedure to sound convincing to not only family and friends but some members of the legal fraternity.

Sara Grasso speech at Windsor Hotel

At least twice she was able to arrange work in legal offices, once on work experience after approaching a solicitor in a supermarket and once as a clerk-typist with a city firm.

Classmates at Kilmaire College for young Catholic ladies in Hawthorn recall Grasso failing the HSC and being told by a teacher she would "never be anything but a hairdresser'' like her father.

The following year she repeated at Sacred Heart Girls' College in Oakleigh and managed to pass, but with marks that were a long way short of the level required for entry to the law faculty at Melbourne University.

That proved only a minor impediment to Grasso, who discovered she could not only study law despite being an average student but could achieve academic excellence by simply creating her own tertiary qualifications.

She completed her charade by creating fake degrees, scholarships and awards for imaginary achievements in the fields of both law and foreign language.

As well as an arts degree, a law degree with honours and her certificate of membership of the Law Institute of Victoria, there were trophies for mooting, awards for Japanese poetry, essays and language and a plaque acknowledging her as Student Of The Year in Japanese. Not bad for someone who did not speak Japanese!

Sara Grasso

A crowning glory in her crowded trophy cabinet was the seemingly prestigious but totally fraudulent "Sir James McKenzie Law Scholarship, proudly won by Sara Grasso for academic excellence to attend the University of Cambridge''.

Grasso's family and friends were suitably impressed and farewelled her at Melbourne Airport as she flew out to study at Cambridge, but her academic voyage of discovery took her only as far as Sydney.

After flying back to Melbourne determined to keep a low profile, she bumped into one of her party guests in the street but convinced him not to tell her parents - then borrowed money from him.

The chance of anyone who lent Grasso money ever seeing it again was low.

On the way to fulfilling her life-long dream, she cheated victims who believed she was a lawyer out of more $660,000.

She pleaded guilty in 1995 to five counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception, six of theft and one of obtaining property by deception.

Judge John Hassett heard the articulate and persuasive Grasso told her unsuspecting victims she owned apartments in Florence, ran a slate and marble importing business, owned the Block Arcade off Collins Street and was involved in selling communications to a Russian firm.

Sara Grasso and cake

One couple- old friends of her family - lost their home after mortgaging it so they could lend Grasso $220,000 she claimed she needed to free a shipment of slate and save her sham importing business.

One of the couple's cousins mortgaged his house on Grasso's "legal advice'' and borrowed against it so he could lend her $70,000. She also ran up bills of $30,000 on his Diner's Card.

Another family lost $215,000 they raised so Grasso could complete a loan she claimed to be arranging for a Japanese business consortium.

A couple she met at Jupiter's Casino in Queensland contacted the young woman they thought was a wealthy, successful lawyer for legal advice when they returned to Melbourne.

They later lent her $47,000, allegedly to secure her share of a city office building she was buying.

Barrister Sean Grant told the County Court that Grasso had "lived a lie from the time she entered the university to the time she entered Fairlea Women's Prison'', where she had been remanded 16 months earlier after repeatedly breaching bail conditions.

"Sara Grasso had a dream. That dream became all consuming,'' Mr Grant said.

"It was obsessive and compulsive to the point where the dream did not become life, but rather life became an illusion, a fantasy''.

Psychologist Jeffrey Cummins told the court Grasso suffered from delusions of grandeur, success and unlimited power, which typified her narcissistic personality disorder.

Grasso's plea hearing heard it was unclear what happened to the proceeds of her scam, although she said she spent about $60,000 on gambling and at least $15,000 on designer clothes to create a successful image.

Sara Grasso

By the time the legal process finally ran its course, she was the mother of an eight-month-old baby boy who was born in prison.

By then the baby's father, a small-time armed robber, was behind bars in New South Wales.

Judge Hassett sentenced Grasso to 3 1/2 years jail, with a minimum non-parole period of 18 months. Because she had already spent 502 days in custody, she was released on parole only six weeks later.

Geoff Enright, the detective who charged Grasso, said her legal knowledge was flawed, but "good enough to rip off gullible, naive people''.

"I'd give her 10 out of 10 for arrogance,'' Det-Sgt Enright said.

He said her arrogance, and her unswerving belief in her legal ability, was reflected in the fact she had sacked 10 lawyers whose advice to plead guilty did not coincide with her view of the case.

Grasso represented herself at her committal hearing, where several of her victims said she "carried on like Perry Mason''.

Two years later, she was again sitting at the bar table during a Federal Court bankruptcy examination, where she could still not explain what became of the money she stole from people who thought she was a lawyer.

Chewing gum while being questioned after moving to the witness box, she said she had enjoyed "a very lavish lifestyle'' and had a gambling problem, losing money at Queensland casinos and Melbourne racetracks.

When asked whether there were any assets left, she replied: "Absolutely not''.

Grasso, then 31, told the bankruptcy examination in 1997 she was "a single mum'' and received a supporting parent's benefit and an Austudy allowance while studying English, Spanish and business studies by correspondence.

She said she no longer lived with the man who fathered her son and baby daughter.

Grasso told the Herald Sun after she was released from jail she was not the only imposter to study at Melbourne University.

She said neither her family nor any of her fellow students knew she was a fake during her four years at university.

She admitted she had been "a very ambitious, even greedy, individual'', but claimed she would have made a great lawyer.

Grasso said she had never missed a lecture and had worked "a heck of a lot harder'' than another law student who had won a Rhodes Scholarship.

She had earlier told calligrapher Leonard Pepperell the Melbourne University law degree certficate she'd ordered was to be used in a theatre production.

Mr Pepperell, who turned the angel on the university's crest on the honours degree so it faced the wrong way, said Grasso "could charm a bird out of a tree''.

"If she'd turned her talents to something else, like marketing, she'd probably be a millionaire,'' he said.

Det-Sgt Enright was not so charitable, preferring to think Grasso proved the old courtroom adage that anyone who represents themself has a fool for a client.

"And Sara Grasso is not just a fool,'' he said, "but a liar and a cheat''.

Footnote: Grasso moved to NSW after she served her sentence. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

This report was first published in True Crime Scene in July 2012.