IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA
AT Melbourne
CRIMINAL DIVISION	Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication	
Case No. CR-22-02206

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS		
		
v		
		
MORAWSKY, Steven		

-

JUDGE:	His Honour Judge Palmer	
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne	
DATE OF HEARING:	8 May 2024	
DATE OF SENTENCE:	20 June 2024	
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Morawsky	
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2024] VCC 895		

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:	Criminal Law - Sentence
Catchwords: 	Obtaining property by deception – rolled up charges relating to sustained offending – accountant depositing client funds into own account – position of trust – confession provided investigators with evidence of further offending that would otherwise be not uncovered – co-operation with investigators – remorse- early plea of guilt – verdins in relation to old age and declining health
Legislation Cited:	Crimes Act 1958 (Vic)
Cases Cited:	DPP v Kevin [2021] VCC 343; DPP v Taylor [2020] VCC 176; DPP v Eliezer [2020] VCC 252; DPP v Kelly [2020] VCC 736; DPP v Athanasiadis [2019] VCC 2257; DPP v Nirens [2017] VCC 1960; DPP v King [2016] VCC 379; R v Doran [2005] VSCA 271; FAJ v The Queen [2011] VSCA 137; SJ v The Queen [2012] VSCA 237; Ryan v The Queen (2001) 206 CLR 267; R v Ellis [1986] 6 NSWLR 603
Sentence:	4 years, 6 months imprisonment with a non-parole period of 18 months
6AAA:

APPEARANCES:
	Counsel	Solicitors	
For the DPP	Mr Simon Lee	Office of Public Prosecutions Victoria	
			
For the Accused	Mr Sam Tovey	Tony Hargreaves & Partners Lawyers	

HIS HONOUR:

Circumstances of offending

1.	Steven Morawsky, as a self-employed accountant you were in a position of trust that gave you access and control over clients’ bank accounts and trustee accounts. 
2.	On 17 November 2001 you transferred money into your own bank account from the estate of DP Mein of which you were the sole trustee. 
3.	Your offending first began to be uncovered in 2019 when Craig Retallack, an accountant employed by the DP Mein estate, contacted you to enquire about its current status. 
4.	To your credit, when your solicitor responded on your behalf, he informed Mr Retallack that the funds had been misappropriated.  On 27 November 2019, Mr Retallack contacted the police, who commenced an investigation.  
5.	On 7 January 2020 police contacted your solicitor, and were informed that you had provided a large number of documents.  The police collected the documents. They revealed that you had also misappropriated funds from a further seven accounts over a period of 17 years, involving more than a thousand separate transfers into your bank accounts.  The amount of the transfers totalled more than four million dollars. 
6.	On 2 March 2020, you were interviewed by police and made full admissions to your offending. 
7.	You told police that the majority of the money had been spent on living expenses for you and your partner and on debts incurred by your drug affected daughter. You also said that you had given some of the money to your son and daughter when they were in financial trouble. 
Charges
8.	In relation to your offending, you have been charged with: 
a.	Eight counts of obtaining property by deception contrary to section 81 of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic). 
b.	Each charged is a rolled-up charge alleging multiple transfers from one of the eight bank accounts: 
i.	$1,585,302.33 obtained from the Estate of DP Mein between 17 November 2001 and 12 November 2018. 
ii.	$366,431.50 obtained from the Estate of Kathleen Donelan between 27 December 2001 and 28 January 2014.
iii.	$272,270 obtained from John Gordon Waugh between 14 January 2002 and 26 June 2014. 
iv.	$229,628 obtained from Anita Carolyn Westacott between 7 June 2002 and 9 July 2014.
v.	$212,442 obtained from Anna Lousie Westacott between 7 June 2002 and 29 September 2014.
vi.	$127,130 obtained from the Estate of BK Mein between 27 December 2002 and 5 September 2014. 
vii.	 $1,047,255 obtained from Waugh and Co between 24 July 2005 and 30 September 2014. 
viii.	$324,708.75 obtained from Georgina Alison Kerr between 24 July 2005 and 30 September 2014.
c.	The maximum penalty for each charge is 10 years imprisonment. 
9.	The beneficiaries of four of these accounts – Laurie Mein, Anita Westacott, Anna Westacott and Georgina Kerr – prepared victim impact statements which spoke of the devastating impact your offending had had on their lives.  I take that impact into account in sentencing you.  
10.	With the other four accounts – the Estate of Kathleen Donelan, John Waugh, the Estate of BK Mein and Waugh and Co – no beneficiary has yet been identified.  The amount you stole from these four accounts totals approximately two million dollars.  
Objective seriousness and current sentencing practice

11.	Your offending was extremely serious: 
a.	It involved the abuse of your position as a trusted family accountant;
b.	Those breaches of trust involved more than a thousand transactions spanning nearly two decades;
c.	The total amount you misappropriated was very large: more than four million dollars; and
d.	Your offending had a serious impact on vulnerable people who relied on you, as set out in the victim impact statements.  
12.	The defence provided me with a table of cases that were said to be comparable to yours in that they involved high quantum breaches of trust.  Of course every case is different, and current sentencing practice is neither determinative, nor a yardstick.  Nevertheless, what I take from these decisions is that:
a.	General deterrence is an extremely significant sentencing consideration; denunciation and just punishment are also important;
b.	Previous good character is given less weight in mitigation, because it can be used to facilitate the offending; and
c.	Offenders who abuse a position of trust to steal large amounts of money can usually expect substantial periods of imprisonment (with head sentences often in the five to six year range).
13.	Both parties submitted that the appropriate sentencing disposition in your case is a head sentence with a non-parole period, and that it was open to me to impose an aggregate sentence.  Your counsel submitted that your case could be distinguished from the comparable cases he referred to on the basis that your subjective circumstances were almost uniquely weighty.  
14.	The prosecutor accepted that these subjective circumstances were powerfully mitigatory; however, he submitted that the competing demands of general deterrence and these mitigating factors could be best met by a substantial head sentence and a comparatively short non-parole period. 
Personal circumstances and other subjective matters 
15.	You were born in post-war Germany and immigrated to Australia at a young age.  You grew up in a happy and loving home.  
16.	You married your wife Susanne more than fifty years ago.  Together you have three children, two daughters and a son.  
17.	You trained as an accountant after being invited by your father in law to join his accounting firm.  Your worked with your father in law for approximately 13 years, until his firm merged with a larger firm. 
18.	In 1995, you left and started your own practice.  Many of your clients came with you.  You worked as a self-employed accountant until retirement in 2019.
19.	At various times during this period your children fell into financial and other difficulties.  Some of the details of this were undoubtedly traumatic for you and for other members of your family.  
20.	It was during this period that you began to steal money from your clients.  I accept that you used the money for the purposes you said in your record of interview, rather than to fund an extravagant lifestyle.  Nevertheless, you took money that did not belong to you in order to benefit yourself and the members of your family.
21.	You have no criminal history, other than this offending.  The nature of the offending – involving a breach of trust – means that I give this less weight as a mitigating factor.  
22.	You played a very significant role in assisting the police to investigate you. When Mr Retallack wrote to you in relation to the estate of DP Mein, your solicitor responded on your behalf, informing Mr Retallack that the money had been misappropriated.  Mr Retallack then contacted the police.  When the police contacted your solicitor, they were provided with evidence of your misappropriations from another seven accounts.  It is possible that the police would not have discovered your offending in relation to these accounts had you not volunteered this information.  
23.	In relation to the four accounts of which there were no identified beneficiaries (and therefore no-one who could have said that the transfers were not authorised), it appears to be extremely unlikely that you could have been prosecuted without your assistance.  With all eight charges, the documents you provided, together with your admissions, form the foundation of the prosecution case against you.  
24.	Your conduct in assisting the police to this extent, speaks powerfully of your remorse, reduces the need for specific deterrence, increases the prospects for rehabilitation, and means that you deserve a significant reduction in your sentence.
25.	You pleaded guilty at the earliest reasonable opportunity.  Your pleas of guilty saved the courts, witnesses, prosecuting agencies and the community as a whole time, money, inconvenience and uncertainty.  This is particularly important at a time when the courts are still dealing with the after-effects of the pandemic.  Had you not pleaded guilty, I would have imposed a significantly longer term of imprisonment.
26.	You were 71 years old when you were charged.  You are now 75 years old.  Given your co-operation, you are not responsible for that delay.  But it has meant that the prospect of imprisonment has been hanging over you for several years.  During that time you have not engaged in any further offending.  This confirms your positive prospects for rehabilitation.  
27.	You have mental and physical health issues.  You are also now at a reasonably advanced age. For these reasons prison will weigh more heavily on you. Prison may also exacerbate your health issues.   I take these matters into account in sentencing you, including in setting a non-parole period. 
Orders
28.	Had you not pleaded guilty, I would have imposed a sentence of six and a half years imprisonment.  
29.	Instead, I impose the following sentence:
a.	On counts one to eight, I impose an aggregate sentence of four and a half years of imprisonment;
b.	I set a minimum non-parole period of 20 months.