’Stolen’ car in own driveway
Fraudster’s $16,000 insurance payout
A HAMLYN Heights woman ripped her insurance company off for almost $16,000 but was caught because she failed to hide the car she had reported stolen.
Hopeless hoaxer Georgia Kirby got a payout for having her Holden Commodore pinched in late 2015, but had no explanation for police when they found the same car at her home eight months after the bogus theft.
“She denied any knowledge of the vehicle in her driveway being the same one she’d reported stolen,” police prosecutor Leading Senior Constable Geoff Lamb told the Geelong Magistrates’ Court yesterday.
Kirby, 30, used the money to feed a raging heroin habit, agreeing with magistrate Frank Jones’ assessment that it “all went up her arm”.
She scored more than $13,500 to replace the car, while a further $2300 was spent on hire cars for her in the weeks after the fake theft.
“Usually the insurance company investigators do a very thorough job, but here they can’t have done,” Mr Jones observed.
The court was told Kirby had been abusing substances for half her life, and had been in trouble with the law often since 2011, when she was shot in the face by police during a botched robbery in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.
The court was told Kirby made formal reports to police and the RACV in November 2015, alleging her car was stolen, and pocketed the payout the following month.
In July last year police visited her home for another matter and saw the car, still coloured grey, but without its registration plates, in the driveway.
A check of the stationwagon’s vehicle identification number confirmed it was the car she reported stolen.
The court was told she had also originally denied committing a petrol drive-off in a different car at service station at Little River in April 2016, telling police she thought waving a BP card at the attendant from afar was “a form of payment”.
But the court heard she was now willing to admit her crimes as she strives to get clean after spending the past 50 days in custody.
Her lawyer said Kirby would, when the time comes, leave Geelong, and had admitted “If I was still on the street I’d be dead (by now)”.
Mr Jones said he believed a period on parole would be more effective than a community corrections order once the woman was freed from jail.
On counts of obtaining property by deception, obtaining financial advantage by deception, making a false report to police, theft and three counts of failing to answer bail he jailed the woman for 15 months with a non-parole period of nine months.