Three sentenced on car insurance fraud count

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 4

Three sentenced on car insurance fraud count

Two men were jailed and a woman was given a sentence of periodic detention when they appeared for sentence in the District Court yesterday on a joint charge of conspiring to defraud an insurance company. The defendants were Stuart Russell, aged 48, a sickness beneficiary (Mr P. J. McMenamin), Neville William Hamilton, aged 35, unemployed, and Mary Joy Dwyer, aged 27, a process worker (both represented by Mr A. N. D. Garrett).

The three had pleaded guilty before a scheduled trial by jury was to have taken place, on a joint charge that last September 16 they conspired together to defraud the S.I.M.U. Insurance Company by falsely representing to the company that a 1977 car valued at $6OOO and owned by. Dwyer had been unlawfully taken.

Judge Hobbs jailed Russell and Hamilton for six months, and sentenced Dwyer to three months periodic detention.

In submissions in mitigation of penalty counsel

for the three sought noncustodial sentences.

Mr B. M. Stanaway, for the Crown, said there was little to distinguish between the parts played by each ’ defendant in the conspiracy. The only distinction that could be made was the Dwyer was a first offender.

The two men had past criminal records and sentences of less than imprisonment for them for

this offence, would be ’ inappropriate, Mr Stanaway submitted. The Judge said that, apart from allowing for Dwyer’s previous clear record, he was not prepared to make any distinction in the roles the three played in the offence. The criminal project they undertook could not have succeeded without the individual actions of each defendant The Judge said Hamil-

* ton was a devious and dishonest man. Russell had a worse criminal record than the others and clearly preferred to live outside the law on what few wits he had. The Judge said Dwyer dearly was a misguided young woman who had become attracted to companionship of the criminal element, which she would have cause to regret In the future.