Two men are in jail for their greedy rorting of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a COVID-19 small business grant scheme.
Ibrahim Hawat, 50, and Zaman Ali Haidary, 36, pleaded guilty to submitting fraudulent applications to the NSW Government scheme established in 2021 to help small businesses deal with the impact of the pandemic.
Hawat successfully scammed the taxpayer-funded scheme out of $636,000, while Haidary was paid a total of $352,500, the court was told.
“Each offender's motive, which was to make easy money, (was) in other words, greed," District Court Judge Penelope Hock said.
On Friday, Hawat was sentenced to five years in jail with a non-parole period of three years and three months. Haidary, who was considered to have a lesser role in the plot, must serve three years and four months in prison, with a non-parole period of two years.
Another man, Ashraf Khoder, who was also involved in rorting the scheme was earlier sentenced to four years and six months with a non-parole period of three years.
Shortly after the grant scheme came into effect, a police taskforce was established to investigate numerous suspected fraudulent applications being submitted to Service NSW.
Service NSW would not make more than one payment into the same bank account, prompting the men to submit applications under stolen identities.
“The group obtained stolen identification information which they used to open bank accounts in that victims name,” Judge Penelope Hock told the court.
“The identity information and bank details of approximately 35 different people were used to receive payments.”
Hawat also made a fraudulent claim to a flood recovery program, falsely stating he operated a carpentry business. No benefits were paid.
At the time Hawat was also receiving unemployment benefits from Centrelink.
