As the years unfurled, my life would have looked pretty darned good to the outside world. I had two adorable little girls to fuss over, a ‘loving husband’ and a nicely renovated house in beautiful Healesville. I had a steady job and enough money to make sure my daughters never wanted for anything. They always had front-row seats whenever The Wiggles or Disney on Ice came to town, and I’d even pay for one or two of their little friends to come along. Sometimes I’d go to Target and spend $300 on twenty new outfits for them. I’d stock their rooms with the nicest things I could, from comfy beds and the softest doonas to nice furniture, cuddly toys, beautiful books and fun games to play with.
I didn’t mind spending money on myself either – over and above the house renovation, which cost in the vicinity of $50,000 to $60,000. I was never your high-end shopper, though. I never set foot in a Louis Vuitton or Prada store; the likes of Target and KMart were good enough for me. While we lived well we never took overseas holidays (certainly not any more cruises!), nor did we drive prestige cars, own a holiday house, boats, jet-skis or flashy toys – although we did buy a second block of land in a new subdivision in Healesville. I would take friends on holidays to Mildura and pay for everything: accommodation, food, fun – anything – because I was so thankful that they were my friends and I had them in my life. And also, somehow, because I could afford it.
Being partial to bling I collected about $20,000 worth of jewellery over the years and I loved buying make-up: it helped paper over the cracks and cover the worry lines caused by the crushing weight of dread. Dressing my life up with baubles and fertilising friendships with cash only served to hide the reality of my marriage and the turbulent, tortured inner-life I led. All of the stuff I bought and the trips and restaurant dinners I paid for barely propped up the flimsy veneer that mine was a good life, a happy life, a successful life. My life was anything but. In the end, no amount of foundation and Revlon lippy could conceal the darkest, ugliest reality of all – that I was a criminal. A really, really bad one.
There is a lot I can’t say about the crimes I committed. There are complex and consequential legal reasons that govern what can be revealed about why and how I came to steal my first sum of money via a dodgy cheque, written through the business I was working for, and how it led to a pattern of behaviour that would spiral wildly out of control. I can’t even say who else worked there. What I can say is that I honestly doubt anyone suddenly wakes up one day at the age of thirty-four and decides, ‘You know what? Today I’m going to start a sideline career as a serial fraudster and risk losing everything and everyone I love in my life.’ At least I didn’t. It started as one mistake at the top of a slippery slope – until I crossed a clear line with the mischievous stroke of a pen for the first time in 1997.
In early 2003, however, I was charged with a fraud that spanned a staggering six years. My criminal arrears had accumulated drip by drip, lie by lie, cheque by cheque: a few hundred here, a few thousand there. Naturally – so as not to get caught – I was constantly attempting to repay the account I was plundering, but gradually I tumbled further and deeper and more hopelessly into the red. Over seventy-two months it all added up to an astronomical amount, and by the time it was all over, the papers reported that it was the biggest white-collar crime committed by a female in the state of Victoria at that time.
I remember the moment the gig was up. I’d been heading to visit friends and family in Mildura and on the way I’d stopped to deposit a forged cheque (worth $3000 or so) at a bank branch in Lilydale, the suburb in Melbourne where we’d tied the knot. The teller looked at the cheque, then looked at me, then looked at the cheque again, and as I walked out of the bank I caught her out of the corner of my eye stepping officiously into a back room. ‘You’re done for,’ a voice in my head announced. ‘You’re caught.’ When I got back from Mildura, the bank manager had informed another person at the company I was working for that the account in question was almost empty.
All I could think to do was call the criminal law specialist Paul Galbally, whose sister-in-law I knew. My reaction was not to call my husband because another thing the outside world had no idea about was how strained things had become with the man who was now my ex-husband. Our dysfunctional marriage had been at its worst and was heading for a climactic ending. We both realised this and let animosity take over any reasonable behaviour, as impending divorce often does. Christmas Eve 2000 was the night my marriage ended. It was a done deal in my heart and soul.
So, now that I found myself in serious criminal trouble, I figured Paul would be the right person to represent me. His offices were in the court precinct in the middle of Melbourne and when I sat down at our first meeting I got straight to the point. ‘I think I’m going to be arrested for fraud.’ There. I said it out loud.
‘Right. OK, Kerry, can you tell me exactly how much fraud you think you’re going to be arrested for?’ Paul responded calmly and politely. At that stage I was under the impression I had slowly siphoned off somewhere in the order of $500,000 – an eye-watering amount in anyone’s book. It would almost quadruple by the time I was finally sentenced.
‘Maybe half a million dollars.’
‘I see. Well if it is $500,000, and you’ve actually done that, then you’re looking at two years in jail.’
I tried to say something but I couldn’t speak. I made a feeble coughing noise instead.
‘If and when you’re arrested,’ he continued, ‘make sure you ring me immediately.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I stammered.
The meeting would have lasted forty-five minutes but as I walked back to my car all I could think of was Paul’s first sentence at the beginning of our conversation: ‘You’re looking at two years.’ When I climbed inside the car and rang my ex-husband, I blurted out the news: ‘I’m looking at two years!’ With the notion of a prison term sinking in, another sentence swirled inside my skull: ‘What about Shannyn and Sarah?’