A former bank worker who scammed Facebook Marketplace users out of thousands of dollars has avoided jail, with a judge describing some of his offending as "hopeless".
Daniele Biglietto pleaded guilty to 37 counts of financial fraud, which he claimed resulted from addictions to cocaine and gambling.
The 37-year-old was sentenced on Thursday to three years' jail, to be served in the community under an intensive corrections order.
NSW District Court Judge Michael McHugh said most of Biglietto's offending was unsophisticated and seemed almost guaranteed to get him caught.
Over several years beginning in 2018, he offered electronic items - mostly smart phones - for sale on Facebook Marketplace for which he would accept payment without actually sending the item.
When the items were not received by the buyer, Biglietto purported to give them a refund by sending a dodgy cheque.
The accounts used by Biglietto for the sales were easily linked back to him, including his mother's and father's accounts - and even his own, the court was told.
In some of the cases Biglietto's victims were paid back, but many were left out of pocket.
"Most of it was of relatively minor amounts, although certainly for those persons directly impacted - $1000 is $1000," Judge McHugh said.
Biglietto also wrote bad cheques in an attempt to pay for tens of thousands of dollars worth of goods, including $10,000 to a fertility clinic for IVF treatment.
Judge McHugh found the most difficult to explain of Biglietto's offending were attempts to purchase two vehicles worth $72,000 and $43,800 from a Mazda dealership using valueless cheques.
"Just what the offender thought he was going to obtain there is why I classify it as bizarre," Judge McHugh said.
"Clearly, the proprietor wasn't going to release the vehicles until the cheques cleared.
"In some respects it was completely inexplicable what he was attempting to do - it was hopeless."
While Judge McHugh said he hesitated to call the offending a Ponzi scheme, he said there were similar elements including that some of the victims appeared to have been paid back using money stolen from other victims.
Biglietto worked for two banks in customer service, before leaving to start his own car detailing business, the court was told.
In April 2021, Biglietto was interviewed by police, but continued to commit offences, showing he knew he was being monitored and his actions were wrong, Judge McHugh noted.
"It's a flagrant disregard," the judge said.
Judge McHugh noted fraud offences, "loosely called white collar crime", in many cases were most effectively dealt with by a period of full-time jail.
However, in Biglietto's case, having already served 76 days behind bars before receiving bail, the judge opted not to send him back into custody, instead imposing the condition he attend a rehab program for 18 months.
Convictions were recorded but no further action taken over charges for possessing 1.2 grams of cocaine and growing a 77cm cannabis plant, which stemmed from a search of Biglietto's property.
