A Lake Macquarie woman convicted of defrauding the NDIS has found herself before the Federal Court for defying an order banning her from the disability sector.
Swansea woman Lynette Peters, also known as Lynette Morgan, was ordered to pay $180,000 after the Federal Court found she kept providing services to vulnerable participants under a fake name in defiance of the ban.
Peters was banned from the National Disability Insurance Scheme for two years from January 2025 after being convicted of seven counts of fraud over NDIS claims totaling almost $26,000.
She was sentenced to an 18-month community correction order.
The Federal Court has now found that within weeks of the ban taking effect, Peters was already arranging to breach it.
She continued to provide support coordination services to two NDIS participants while disguising her involvement behind a false identity.
Justice Yaseen Shariff ordered Peters to pay a civil penalty of $180,000 and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission's legal costs after finding earlier in May that she had contravened the banning order.
The court heard Peters continued to provide support coordination to a man with schizophrenia, autism and substance issues who was on daily methadone, and a 75-year-old woman living with paraplegia after a spinal injury who uses a wheelchair and has ongoing foot injuries and infections.
To conceal what she was doing, Peters issued service agreements and invoices in the name of another woman. NDIS payments were directed to her account before being transferred to Peters.
Justice Shariff found Peters' conduct was "serious, calculated and deliberate," noting she had multiple opportunities to stop but "pressed on regardless" through months of calls, emails, text messages and home visits.
Her breaches only ended when NDIS Commission investigators caught her at the female NDIS participant's home in March 2025.
When confronted, Peters initially denied she was there to provide support.
She later gave investigators a partial account of her conduct but sought to shift blame onto the other woman, and made no formal admissions until a contested Federal Court hearing forced the matter to trial.
The judge rejected Peters' claim to have felt genuine remorse, saying her limited cooperation and attempts to minimise her conduct suggested she was "struggling with the personal and professional consequences of having been caught out" rather than genuinely sorry.
Peters, who represented herself and argued she could not afford a substantial penalty given her unemployment and weekly rent of about $620, had urged the court to impose a much lower fine than the $160,000 to $230,000 range sought by the commission.
In an email to investigators, Peter's said her intention was "not to deceive or breach any NDIS regulations, but to have a temporary source of income while awaiting my superannuation payout."
The court accepted she had limited financial means but said her capacity to pay could not be allowed to undercut the penalty needed to deter others from breaching banning orders.
Justice Shariff said Peter's actions caused immeasurable loss and damage and undermined the integrity of the NDIS.
"The nature, extent and circumstances of the contraventions engaged in by Ms Peters were appalling," she said.
"It is the type of conduct that members of the Australian community would correctly regard as a blight on the NDIS scheme and as undermining fundamental purposes of that scheme.
"By charging for NDIS services which Ms Peters was banned from performing, taxpayers' money was being used for an unlawful purpose, which contributes to depriving the NDIS scheme of legitimacy and stability."
The commission had also sought a declaration and an injunction permanently restraining Peters from the sector, but Justice Shariff declined both, noting her banning order expires at the end of this year and there was no evidence she had breached it since March 2025.
