$1.3m stolen to pay debts

Michael John Henderson, 59, pleaded guilty to 80 crimes of dishonesty and was sentenced to 7 1/2 years' jail in the Supreme Court in Hobart yesterday.

Justice Alan Blow said Henderson initially committed the fraud to help clear the debts of his friend Dimitrios Belias, murdered in Melbourne on September 9, 1999.

``Mr Belias owed very large amounts of money to some Melbourne underworld figures, and was unable to pay, and was first threatened and ultimately killed as a result,'' Justice Blow said.

Mr Belias told Henderson of his fears and Henderson set up a fraud scheme to help him pay the debts back.

The scheme, for which he was charged under Tasmanian law, involved stealing from a subsidiary of IBM in 1999 by lodging 24 forged computer lease applications on behalf of other companies.

The subsidiary, IBMGF, provided finance to small businesses to lease computer equipment.

Henderson set up a company called Millennium Hardware for the fraud and submitted the applications in the name of 24 real businesses, sometimes forging a copy of the proprietor's drivers licence to complete the documents.

``When a lease application was successful, it was the practice of IBMGF to transfer the price of the goods to its agent as the supplier of the computer equipment,'' Justice Blow said.

``Accordingly, the company made 24 payments into an account nominated by Mr Henderson ... varied in size from $18,833 to $19,945.''

However, none of the money from those payments went to repaying Mr Belias' debt.

Henderson was charged with the fraud in late 1999, committed to trial in 2003 and was to plead guilty in 2005 but failed to appear.

Later that year, in response to threats from the same underworld figures, he defrauded the Australian Tax Office of $888,455.

He stole the money by registering a small firewood and logging business under the joint names of his half-brother, a friend and an employee and lodged 56 false claims to a diesel rebate scheme.

The fraud took place between September 2005 and May 2006 and led to 56 charges under federal law.

``Counsel for Mr Henderson told me that although Mr Henderson was in no way responsible for incurring any of the debts that led to the killing of Mr Belias, he was contacted after that murder; that a demand was made for him to pay the balance of Mr Belias' debts; that he was threatened; and that he paid the debts in full with the proceeds of money that he fraudulently obtained,'' Justice Blow said.

However Justice Blow said he stole more than was needed to repay the debt and the balance of the money was not accounted for.

``He was a gambler, but his counsel told me that he was the sort of gambler who tended to beat the house when he went to a casino, and to win at the races,'' he said.

``I simply do not know what became of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that passed though Mr Henderson's hands and did not go towards the payment of the debts of Mr Belias.''

Henderson has been in custody since being arrested in New South Wales, where he was then living, on September 16, 2009. He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years jail, backdated to 2009, and will be eligible for parole in June 2013.