- In short: A Melbourne woman has been jailed for defrauding victims out of more than $600,000 by scamming her employer and others
- What's next? The 35-year-old will be eligible for parole after one year and eight months behind bars
A mother-of-two who defrauded her employer and others of more than $630,000 has been sent to prison for more than three years.
Judge Amanda Chambers admonished Ashlee Frost, 35, for exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic in what she called a "reasonably sophisticated" scam as the serial fraudster was sentenced in the County Court of Victoria on Friday.
Both of Frost's scams were "objectively serious" offending, compounded by the number of victims, the judge said.
The 35-year-old's first series of offences began in August 2018 when, as an executive assistant at pharmaceutical company CSL in the northern Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows, she had been entrusted with organising travel for her superiors, the court heard.
However, she would regularly cancel flight and accommodation bookings she made using the company-provided credit cards of the six executives.
When credits from the cancelled bookings were reimbursed to her, she would sell them on at a discounted price.
At the heart of the offending was what Judge Chambers called a "long-term and significant addiction to gambling", into which the woman would tip hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By the time Frost was fired for poor performance in September 2019, she had made 93 fraudulent transactions over the past year, the vast majority of them successful.
"The amount of all transactions, both successful and unsuccessful, totalled $409,531.62," the judge said.
But her colleagues' suspicions were raised.
One executive's credit card had continued to record transactions despite the fact he had left the company — and the country — leading the company to audit Frost's work laptop and eventually take the matter to the police.
'You exploited the pandemic'
The pandemic had arrived by the time Frost had relocated to Queensland and concocted a second scam the following year.
Posing as a down-on-her-luck Webjet employee and a travel agent, she defrauded about eight people living in Victoria of a total of $225,000.
On offer to her victims were travel credits that Frost said were heavily discounted because she and her colleagues were struggling to make ends meet, sometimes buttressing the story with false documents and fictitious photos of fellow employees.
"This was a ruse designed to convince the victims of the legitimacy of the scheme," the judge said.
Frost was later found to have used her own name, bank and contact details when carrying out the scam.
"In these circumstances, it was inevitable that your offending would ultimately be detected," Judge Chambers said.
However, because the credits couldn't be used immediately, "it was some time before the victims came to realise they were not genuine", the judge said.
Frost was arrested in Townsville in November 2020 and extradited to Victoria, where she later pleaded guilty to 18 fraud-related charges.
Appearing via videolink from prison, the Frost sat and wept as the circumstances of her offending were read to the court on Friday.
When her sentence — three years and five months — was handed down, her head fell into her hands.
The judge said she considered Frost's complex post-traumatic stress disorder in calculating her sentence, as well as her remorse and willingness to repay her victims, including reimbursing about $111,000 to her former employer, CSL.
Judge Chambers also acknowledged the "real" prospect that Frost, a New Zealand national, could be deported from the country, making it difficult to contact her two children who live in Australia.
A non-parole period of one year and eight months was set.
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