A woman who attempted to defraud $1 million in a sophisticated email scam has narrowly avoided jail and community service.
Annelise Sunderland, 31, fronted Parramatta Local Court on Wednesday, March 15, charged with two counts of ‘recklessly deal with proceeds of crime’.
The Brisbane woman and former Parramatta resident was handed a 20 month Intensive Correction Order (ICO) after she agreed to move back to NSW, where she would have to serve her sentence.
In December 2020, a Canberra woman engaged the services of Graeme C Nettle and Associated Lawyers when she decided to sell her home and purchase a new one.
According to police facts, she had received several emails from the law firm’s genuine domain, nettle.com.
However, the victim received correspondence from an email address with a strategically placed ‘i’ – niettle.com – which had been registered in October 2020 by unknown persons.
The email purported to be from the law firm and advised her to transfer the deposit of $1,044,050 into a National Australia Bank (NAB) account for settlement to occur.
The account belonged to Sunderland, court documents reveal.
Once the victim phoned the law firm and realised the mistake she contacted the bank to stop the payment.
They were able to retrieve all but $2100 of the funds that Sunderland had already transferred internally.
The matter was reported to the state’s cybercrime squad who established Strike Force Urban to investigate cyber-enabled “invoice frauds” or business email compromise (BCE) frauds and the subsequent laundering of money.
The police fact sheet explains that a BCE is when an individual or company “receives an invoice falsely purporting to be from a legitimate goods or service provider, seeking payment into an offender’s account or commonly, an account held by a ‘money mule’.”
It states that “proceeds of crime are typically transferred by the money mule to other accounts or converted to other valuable but untraceable commodities, for example cash, gold or cryptocurrencies”.
At the time of the offence, it is alleged that Sunderland had an account with ABC Bullion.
According to court documents, she had a purchase order created for $614,888 worth of gold but was unable to pay for it once the bank froze the funds and returned them to the victim.
On November 24, 2021, she was arrested and charged with two counts of dealing with proceeds of crime greater than $5000.
She was also charged with ‘dishonestly obtain property by deception’ and ‘dishonestly obtain financial advantage or cause disadvantage by deception’.
Magistrate Cate Follent told the court that the accused seemed to be “putting up barriers” instead of taking advantage of opportunities to avoid going into custody.
She also said that the sentence would need to “appropriately reflect the gravity of a $1m plus dealing”.
Sunderland’s lawyer told the court that his client has underlying mental health conditions, but is taking steps to rehabilitate.
This comes after her application to avoid a criminal record on mental health grounds was rejected.
The court heard that she is unsuitable for community service work because of an unresolved issue with illicit drugs and her mental health.
“The sentence can appropriately be served by way of an Intensive Correction Order,” Magistrate Follent said.
Sunderland, who was supported by her mother in the courtroom, was visibly relieved to have narrowly escaped full-time imprisonment.
She was handed a 20 month ICO with supervision from Newcastle Community Corrections.
Sunderland was also given a 12 month Community Correction Order for the other offences
Formerly with the ABC, Makayla is a graduate of Western Sydney University. She covers a variety of news topics for Parra News.