How to rob a bank with a ball-point pen … A long and expensive fraud results in the inevitable – an order for striking off … Bogus loan applications … Ponzi scheme … Victoria’s most expensive case of fraud and deception … Luan Whitworth on the case 

Denis Angeleri pleaded guilty in 2015 to making 885 false loan applications and inducing people to invest a total of $900,000 dollars in a Ponzi scheme orchestrated by him.

Judge Paul Lacava of the Victorian County Court described Angeleri’s offences as “greater than anything previously recorded in Victoria, involving as it did a high level of planning, sophistication, endeavour and persistence”.

Along with business partners Ian Brindley and Michael O’Brien, Angeleri started a company called Australian Motor Finance that helped subprime borrowers to purchase second-hand motor vehicles.

By entering into agreements with National Australia Bank and Bendigo & Adelaide Bank, AMF would arrange loans with borrowers and manage them by collecting the repayments.

However, by late 2003, AMF had run out of money and was heading towards insolvency.

It was at this point that Angeleri hatched a plan to create false loans and channel the money into AMF’s accounts.

Angeleri used the personal identities of his friends, relatives and previous clients to forge loan applications and in the process secure finance, which was then lopped back to the banks as repayments. 

The level of complexity and sophistication of Angeleri’s fraud was emphasised by Country Court Judge Lacava in sentencing. 

“The fraud required identifying false loan borrowers, completing and submitting false loan applications supported by false documents reflecting the false sale and false purchase of a motor vehicle, setting up and servicing accounts to receive the money derived and to make monthly repayments.” 

The fraud remained undetected for nearly seven years, despite external audits, until Bendigo & Adelaide Bank grew suspicious and ceased funding AMF in 2008.

A receiver was appointed to AMF in 2009 whereupon Angeleri removed loan files and computers from the business premises and siphoned off the money into his personal accounts.

By this time, Angeleri, Brindley and O’Brien had already submitted 885 false loan applications, defrauding the banks of $24.7 million dollars. 

Angeleri was also involved in a Ponzi scheme between 2004 and 2008, inducing people to invest a total of $900,000 by making false representations about the terms and conditions of the investment.

The County Court thought that the seriousness of Angeleri’s offences called for a stern sentence, “because of the need to apply general deterrence and to adequately reflect denunciation for [his] offending”.

“The plan was elaborate, sophisticated and well planned and no stone was left unturned to avoid detection by the banks themselves or by auditors.”  

Angeleri was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment and required to serve a minimum of eight and a half years. Brindley and O’Brien are also serving gaol sentences along with another AMF operative, Joe Porcaro.  

In sentencing the lawyer consideration was given to the suffering and hardship of the victims, many of who had their credit ratings destroyed, while others lost their retirement assets.

It was inevitable that Justice Jack Forrest in the Vic Supremes last month found that Angeleri was “not a fit and proper person to remain a legal practitioner”. 

Angeleri wisely consented to the striking off order. 

Brindley previously worked as an accountant and adviser to Robert Holmes a Court’s Heytesbury Group, while Angeleri’s wife was the subject of attention from crickeker Shane Warne, so much so that Liz Hurley called it a day with the spinner.