Coast mum given six years' jail for $2m Centrelink fraud

A $2 million spending budget fell into a Sunshine Coast mum's lap because a child support worker typed the date into the payment field on her computer.

Judy Lorbek phoned the Human Services Department last year to request an emergency $2900 child support payment.

The Child Support Agency staff member on the other end of the phone entered the date 02-02-2012 in the wrong field which resulted in $2,022,012 ending up in the 47-year-old's bank account.

The cash-strapped mother of three paid off the mortgage on her Nambour home, booked in home renovations and took a contract out on a property in NSW.

Crown prosecutor Aimee Aisthorpe told Brisbane District Court on Friday that Lorbek then went on a spending spree - shouting her and her children on expensive holidays to the Gold Coast and Sydney.

She said Lorbek made 280 transactions as she lived a "profligate" lifestyle - spending money on travel, entertainment, beauty treatments, cinema trips, clothes and fashion accessories.

Lorbek had also gambled a chunk of the money away in Sydney and on the Gold and Sunshine coasts, losing $10,000 in one go at an RSL club.

She withdrew $130,000 through eftpos and $120,000 in cash in the month before authorities realised their mistake.

Lorbek withdrew the mistakenly transferred money immediately and had opened a trust account and eight other bank accounts.

Just more than $1.5 million has been recovered with almsot $433,000 outstanding.

Ms Aisthorpe said the Commonwealth expected to recover between $350,000 and $400,000 selling Lorbek's Nambour home.

Lorbek pleaded guilty to fraud when her case was transferred to this higher court.

The Crown has asked for her to serve two years of a six-year jail term.

Lorbek's defence has asked for five years jail and to serve less than a third of the sentence.

Despite searching more than 300 cases, neither party were able to find comparable circumstances.

Defence barrister Michael McMillan said his client had always been "truly sorry" for stealing the money.

He said Lorbek did not oppose any confiscation of assets associated with her crime, including her Nambour home where she had raised her family since 2001.

Mr McMillan said a psychologist found his client was unlikely to reoffend in this way again.

He said Lorbek had received social security benefits since 1996 but only "plucked up courage" to complain about child support payments in 2009.

Judge Gary Long sentenced Lorbek to six years' jail with a non-parole period of 18 months. She was ordered to pay the Commonwealth back almost $433,000.

Lorbek served 45 days in custody before she was released on bail.

Computer scammers target Queensland residents Please take note and read

The Queensland Police Service has issued a warning to Queensland residents about a scam targeting computer users.

The scam involves people taking a call from a person claiming to be working at a foreign call centre, known as “The Windows Service Centre” or similar. The offender claims to belong to a software support company requested by Microsoft to fix problems on the victim’s computer and informs the victim their PC is infected with viruses and needs to be fixed urgently or it will be destroyed.

The offender will then direct the victim through a process on their computer ultimately giving the offender remote access to the computer to download viruses or gain access to personal information.

Once the offender has gained access, they will then give or sell the victim software in order to prevent this problem in the future. The victim, instead of downloading anti-virus software, may well be installing a virus on their computer which may be used to gather credit card and identity data.

Detective Superintendent Brian Hay of the State Crime Operations Command Fraud and Corporate Crime Group said this scam was just another example of offenders preying on the vulnerabilities of victims.

“In reality, there is nothing wrong with their computer but the scammer has tricked the consumer into believing there is a problem and that paying the fee is the best way to get it fixed. Often they will also push the customer to buy a one year computer maintenance subscription. They are just trying to scam innocent Australians out of money,” Detective Superintendent Brian Hay of theFraud and Cyber Crime Group said.

“Microsoft is not cold-calling consumers in regards to malfunctioning PCs, viruses or any other matter, nor have they engaged other entities on their behalf.
“We have seen this scam work, as the victim may let down their guard when told by the offender they have specific knowledge of error messages on their system. This gives the victim confidence in the caller, which in turn opens the door to fraud,” Detective Superintendent Hay said.

“Giving someone you don’t know remote access to your computer is basically the same as handing your credit card details over to them. With this access, an offender can easily search your computer for banking or personal details or quite easily load malicious software onto your computer.

“If someone calls you with an offer like this, hang up the phone immediately,” Detective Superintendent Hay said.

Members of the community are reminded to never reveal personal or financial information to any person who “cold calls” them on the phone. It has become apparent that some of the targeted victims of this scam have previously engaged in a phone survey some weeks earlier.

This innocuous survey sought no personal information; however, it did query information regarding the householder’s computer equipment. When armed with this information at a later date, thefraudster is able to gain credibility of the consumer to better scam them from their money.

Members of the community are reminded to do their homework. Legitimate companies have measures in place to verify they are a genuine organisation.

This is just some of the things that are incorrect with cams and on dash mounted speed detector units they must be banned as these units are fraud and faulty we the to ban together get these units stoped from ripping the drivers of threw out the world as support the cat in his fight

Today most radar units are extremely accurate. 
There are some conditions that must be met however, and the conditions are as follows: 
The road must be flat and straight. 
There has to be good visibility. 
There needs to be a minimum of traffic 
The officer has to be properly trained to interpret false signals generated by the equipment. Its very rare to find these four conditions existing at the same time. There are a lot of errors that can happen in routine traffic radar operations.


The national Bureau of Standards tested the six radar units most often used by police departments. All of them produced signals that were false from police radios or CD units. All of the units produced panning errors, when used either out or in of the police cars. There were shadowing errors that appeared on all the units when the police cars speed was added to the targeted vehicles speed.

24 models were tested by the International Association of Chief's of Police for five different manufacturers. Those results were even worse than that conducted by the National Bureau of Standards. In spite of the errors found, none of these units were dropped from use. Some of these units are still probably in operation around the country today.

 Panning - This happens when the hand held unit is swept across the dashboard of the car or the control unit mounted to the dash of the car. 

2. Mechanical interference - the a/c or heating fan in the police car, alternator, ignition noises, rotating signs near the roadway, anything mechanical that is operating in the vicinity of the roadway can throw off the readings.

3. Shadowing - all moving radar units have this problem since the targeted speed is calculated by subtracting the speed of the police car from the closing speed of the target.