By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Cranbourne North fraudster has been jailed over an elaborate $940,000 scamming of car dealers and private customers.
Monawar Haidarie, 25, pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to multiple counts of obtaining property by deception, making false documents and knowingly dealing with proceeds of crime.
In a “sophisticated”, “persistent” and “planned” series of cons in 2020, Haidarie ‘sold’ vehicles such as Toyota Prados and Landcruisers that he’d spotted in online ads, Judge Nola Karapanagiotidis outlined in sentencing on 3 June.
He duped buyers using false ads as well as fake aliases, IDs, rego extracts, bank statements, tax statements and sales contracts.
According to an accepted prosecution summary, buyers paid him up to $110,000 per car but he didn’t deliver the vehicles.
Haidarie used some of the ill-begotten proceeds to buy other vehicles.
Two car dealers stated to the court that they wrote off their losses – up to $203,000 – due to their insurers refusing to cover their claims.
Other victims – whose identifications were falsely used – told of the worrying hit to their reputations.
Judge Karapanagiotidis noted that at the time Haidarie’s tiling business was failing during the pandemic.
He turned to methamphetamine abuse and problem gambling, though this was “not an excuse”.
The judge noted his untreated post-traumatic stress from a violent, war-afflicted childhood as a Hazara in Afghanistan, and his youthfulness.
He’d seen violence that no child should see – such as people “blown to pieces” in shopping centres at age five.
His mental scars would make his time in custody more onerous, the judge found.
Judge Karapanagiotidis said Haidarie was initially not “full and frank” with police. He’d since reflected and pleaded guilty, indicating some remorse.
His “relatively limited” criminal history at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court included dishonesty offences. He’d completed two CCOs but never been offered therapeutic-based sentences.
Haidarie was jailed for up to three-and-a-half years with a non-parole period of two years and three months.
For several charges, he was sentenced as a continuing criminal enterprise offender.
His term includes 541 days in pre-sentence detention.
