Like many hopeful punters swiping through dating apps and sharing personal information with potential suitors, our client exchanged messages and selfies with people he met online. He had no reason to suspect that one of those photographs would later be used to steal his identity and implicate him in an alleged fraud.
Several months later, police charged our client with fraud. It was alleged that he had altered an invoice issued by a South Australian company and caused money to be deposited into a bank account held in his name.
There was one significant problem with the prosecution case: our client had never heard of the company, had no knowledge of the bank account and had never accessed or controlled it. After the funds were deposited, the person operating the account transferred the money into a cryptocurrency account, bringing the police investigation to a dead end.
After carefully reviewing the prosecution disclosure, our criminal defence lawyers identified what investigators had apparently overlooked. Our unlucky-in-love client had been catfished and was himself the innocent victim of identity theft.
A selfie he had shared with a potential suitor on a dating app had been used to bypass the identity-verification process required to open a bank account online. The fraudster had established the account in our client’s name and then used it to receive the proceeds of the alleged fraud.
The evidence demonstrated that our client was not the person controlling the account. Far from being involved in the offending, he had unknowingly supplied an identity thief with the photograph needed to impersonate him.
In the lead-up to the trial, we conducted a detailed review of the evidence the prosecution intended to rely upon. This included the relevant bank records and other financial documents.
We identified that important parts of the prosecution evidence were not in an admissible form. Without that evidence, the prosecution would have been unable to establish that our client had received, controlled or dealt with the allegedly fraudulent funds. In our assessment, there was no admissible evidence capable of proving the charge against him.
We wrote to the prosecution setting out the deficiencies in its case and politely invited it to reconsider whether the charge could properly proceed.
Mere hours later, the prosecutor allocated to conduct the trial informed our office that the fraud charge would be withdrawn.
Fraud and dishonesty allegations frequently involve complicated financial records, online accounts, electronic identification procedures and cryptocurrency transactions. The fact that an account has been opened in a person’s name does not necessarily establish that they created, accessed or controlled it.
This case demonstrates the importance of closely examining how an account was opened, who operated it, where the money was transferred and whether the prosecution’s evidence is legally admissible.
If you have been charged with fraud, identity theft or another dishonesty offence in Western Australia, obtaining advice from an experienced Perth criminal defence lawyer at an early stage can be critical.