Siti Kamal: ‘Cruel’ blackmailer to stay behind bars
A woman who scammed the parents of a dying baby for $1000 has been labelled ‘cruel and repellent’ after trying to get out of jail early.
A woman who blackmailed the parents of a dying baby in Melbourne for $1000 through a cruel hoax has failed in her bid to get out of jail early.
Siti Kamal was jailed for three years for blackmail in March last year for trying to get cash from a Boronia couple desperate to retrieve their phone with photos of their terminally ill 11-month-old daughter.
She argued in the Court of Appeal her sentence was manifestly excessive and the sentencing judge made a mistake when it described her offending as “amoral”.
But Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Stephen McLeish rejected this.
“(Kamal) responded to a public plea for help from two especially vulnerable people in a terrible situation by preying upon them for financial gain,” the judges wrote in their decision on Thursday.
“She persisted in her demands even after becoming aware that their plight was at its most grave.
“It was, as the judge said, cruel and repellent,” they said.
The 26-year-old woman sent a message to desperate parents Jay and Dee Windross after they begged for the return of the phone on social media after it was left at Chadstone Shopping Centre.
Kamal never had the phone but demanded $1000 from the couple even when told her their daughter was “in her last minutes”.
The judges said in their decision Kamal “knowingly exacerbated” the distress the couple were facing.
“Both by offering false hope that their photos would be recovered and by continuing to demand money even after being told Amiyah was about to die, and even after she knew she had died,” they wrote.
The judges did not think the seriousness of the crime was lessened because the parents were already vulnerable and distressed.
Kamal is eligible for release later this year, but it is likely she will be deported.