A 70-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to recklessly laundering more than $400,000 in an elaborate criminal scheme that ultimately targeted other lonely women.
The Southport District Court heard Gold Coast woman Elizabeth Ruth Mak was "expertly manipulated" into helping an organised crime syndicate after meeting a man online.
She was lonely and desperate for romance when she developed a relationship with a man named John Hill in 2017, the court was told.
Although Mak had never met Hill, who said he lived overseas, she gave him her bank details.
That was when money began to flow into her bank account.
Hill told Mak to use the money to purchase Bitcoin and share the reference codes with him.
Eight other women linked
The court was told Mak's account was linked to eight women and two businesses via Hill or another person from 2018.
The women were contacted online through dating applications and relationships were established.
Like Mak, the other women never met the men they were talking to online because they also claimed to be living overseas, the court was told.
The women were asked for money by the men for a range of different reasons and they eventually deposited it into the account.
They were told Mak's name was associated with the bank account because she was a business associate or lawyer.
When she saw the money entering her account, Mak asked Hill about it.
The court was told he urged her to buy Bitcoin with the fund and to share the reference codes with him.
'Expertly manipulated'
In January 2020, Mak had been identified by police and told that she should stop receiving the money.
But despite being served a notice explaining that her actions amounted to criminal conduct, Mak continued to receive money, the court heard.
Between May and October of 2020, Mak received $408,000 from unknown third parties.
Although she purchased the cryptocurrency, she received no personal benefit from the transactions.
"It is an example of an elderly, lonely woman, who'd never been in a loving, caring relationship romantically in her life, who obviously seemed desperate to find that," Mak's barrister Bernard Reilly told the court.
"And that was what was so expertly manipulated and used against her to the point where she ignored things that were patently unlikely to be accurate or true.
"That's how she became, essentially, to be used as a conduit in respect of other women who had fallen for a similar ruse."
She was arrested and charged in December 2020.
'Very powerful force'
Mak pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering recklessly on Wednesday.
In sentencing, Judge David Kent KC, said continuing to receive money despite being warned by the police was extraordinary.
"It's perhaps emblematic of the characteristic of the human condition — loneliness is a very powerful force," he said.
"Otherwise the foolishness or naivety of her committing these offences after having been served with a notice almost beggars belief."
Mak was sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment, which was wholly suspended for three years.
"You recklessly facilitated what is probably a fairly large and sophisticated scheme of ongoing fraud," Judge Kent said.
"It is important that this kind of assistance of organised crime, which is what it was, must be denounced in the strongest terms.
"It's conceded, as I've said, you did not personally profit.
"You were manipulated by someone who is at least part of an organised crime syndicate."
