Fraudster builder Timothy Schwab jailed for 18 months

BUILDER Timothy Scwab will serve 18 months behind bars over his $213,000, greed-driven fraud against the Northern Territory taxpayer from the CLP-era Indigenous Employment Provisional Sum

Jailed builder Timothy Schwab was jailed in the NT Supreme Court today.

BUILDER Timothy Scwab will serve 18 months behind bars for over his $213,000, greed-driven fraud against the Northern Territory taxpayer.

Justice Graham Hiley on Wednesday sentenced Schwab, 28, to four years’ jail suspended after 18 months served, the builder having pleaded guilty last week to obtaining benefit by deception.

He swindled the money out of the notoriously mismanaged Indigenous Employment Provisional Sum on 56 occasions, for amounts between $143 and $32,067.

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In sentencing, Justice Hiley said it was surprising fraudsters had not got the message they would serve hefty jail sentences for rorts against the taxpayer, following blanket publicity of cases such as that of corrupt travel agent Xana Kamitsis.

“A lot of members of the public in the Northern Territory would have been fully aware of the circumstances of Kamitsis having committed similar fraud in relation to the (NT Government) travel scheme,” Justice Hiley said.

Justice Hiley said many of the referees who vouched for Schwab’s purported good character seemed ignorant of his offending and wrongly believed he was trustworthy.

“Unfortunately none of your referees seem to have been aware of this fraudulent conduct. This suggests that they don’t really know you as well as they make out, this particularly applies to those who say you are an honest person.”

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Justice Hiley said there was little explanation for Schwab’s offending “other than greed”.

“There is no suggestion that you were in dire financial straits or need.”

Schwab was the manager of suburban building firm Timber and Steel Constructions.

The court heard on Monday that Schwab owned an $870,000 house in Nightcliff, drove a

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Ford Mustang and had repaid just $33,000 to the taxpayer.

On Monday Crown Prosecutor David Morters said Justice Hiley would conclude Scwab’s lifestyle was bankrolled “to an extent, from the money which he has stolen from the Northern Territory community”.

“The system reposed a certain amount of trust in the way he and other builders would make claims, and certainly he has breached that trust by exploiting the system,” Mr Morters said.

Mr Morters said Schwab was only truly sorry for the predicament he was now in.

“It is often the case that people are remorseful when they are facing the harsh reality of imprisonment,” he said.

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Schwab’s lawyer, Matt Hubber, said his client was not “a man of particularly worldly experience” and had made changes to his business so the fraud could not continue once he returned to work.

Justice Hiley flagged concerns about the management of the scheme Schwab rorted, which continued to make payments to him based on false invoices even after bureaucrats had red-flagged him for fraud.