A Melbourne woman says she's sorry for her major role in a cyber crime syndicate that targeted $10 million in Australian superannuation and share accounts.
"I promise never to do anything like this to you or anyone else," Jasmine Vella-Arpaci wrote to her victims ahead of her sentencing on major fraud charges.
She was 19 years old when she got involved in the crime syndicate, in which prosecutors have described her as a principal partner.
The group succeeded in defrauding $3 million from superannuation accounts and $238,000 from share trading.
There were further attempts to obtain $1.8 million from super funds and $5.7 million in shares.
Vella-Arpaci's role included setting up a phishing scam to access account login details, targeting admin, HR and bookkeeper usernames in the hopes of accessing superannuation account details and identification documents.
Accounts for people over the age of super eligibility were the "ultimate jackpot", she claimed.
Vella-Arpaci pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy to defraud and one of conspiring to deal in proceeds of crime.
She admitted manipulating identify documents and falsely certifying them so funds could be withdrawn and shares sold.
Funds were deposited into newly opened bank accounts and debit cards were sent to false addresses in Hong Kong, where $2.5 million was laundered.
At the time of her arrest in April 2019, Vella-Arpaci had $150,000 in bitcoin. She had also paid for a trip to Turkey to undergo cosmetic surgery.
Vella-Arpaci's guilty plea came in circumstances where she understood she'd be going to jail and leaving her now four-year-old daughter, her lawyer Paul Smallwood told the Victorian County Court on Wednesday.
He described her childhood home as emotionally cold. Her stepfather drank often and would yell at her for trivial things.
Vella-Arpaci was bullied throughout primary school and high school, and ultimately left at 14, going on to get a hairdressing certificate and to work in a series of jobs including in a bakery, a call centre and as a receptionist.
"She has tried to give (her daughter) the kind of upbringing she herself might not have had," he said.
But prosecutor Georgina Coghlan KC said for more than a year Vella-Arpaci was involved in targeted, calculated, sophisticated and organised offending involving more than $10 million.
"It was persistent, carried out in a virtual world here a shield of anonymity existed and exploitation of financial institutions was possible," she said.
"Although it occurred in a virtual world there are very real victim both individuals an institutions."
One woman, forced to fight to save her family company, told the court she was left feeling like a fraudster trying to convince companies she was the real shareholder trying to undo Vella-Arpaci's scheming.
She endured a nightmare of anxiety and sleepless nights after being alerted to an attempt to sell all the company's shares.
"It felt like every step I took led to more punishment for me and nothing to stop the large expressway the fraudsters were speeding along," she said.
Judge Fiona Todd will sentence Vella-Arpaci on December 16.
She remains on bail.
