Man ‘at top’ of scam faces sentencing

A MELBOURNE man who prosecutors say was “at the top” of a scam that used fraudulent credit card details to purchase expensive technology in Hobart will be sentenced today.

Marko Mawen Chol, 18, has pleaded guilty to two counts of obtaining goods by false pretences, computer related fraud, forgery, uttering and unlawful possession of property.

He has also pleaded guilty to taking a flight using an air passenger ticket under a false name and failing to comply with an order, which involved providing police the pin code to his phone.

The court yesterday heard that Mr Chol, of West Footscray, and his three co-accused flew to Hobart using fake identities on May 27.

Police prosecutor Lakshmi Sundram said Mr Chol was the only member of the group charged with providing false credit card details to Vodafone to buy a pair of $379 wireless Beats by Dre headphones.

The court heard he then acted with Deng Deng, 18, Deng Daw Lal, 20, and a youth to obtain seven iPhone Xs from Telstra worth $12,768 and an iPhone 8 and iPhone 7 to the value of $2676 from Essentially Mobile, using false credit card details.

Ms Sundram said members of the group would not insert their card properly when paying for the items, causing an error message on the EFTPOS machine; they’d then manually enter fraudulent card details saved on their phone.

Defence lawyer Phillipa Monk told the court Mr Chol was born in North Sudan and moved to Australia with his mother and younger brother in 2005.

Ms Monk said Mr Chol re- mains “deeply affected” after witnessing the death of his four-year-old sister, who was attacked by a rogue pit bull dog in August 2011.

Despite the tragedy, Mr Chol completed Year 10 and was offered a partial scholarship to play basketball for a school in the US but never made it overseas because he was struck down by a medical condition which causes his skin to blister and burn, Ms Monk said.

“It’s been a difficult 12 months for Mr Chol because his very promising future has been put on hold while his medical condition is resolved,” she said.

Ms Monk said Mr Chol, who has been in custody since May 28, recognised he had made a “very big mistake”.

She asked Magistrate Reg Marron to consider recording no conviction and instead make Mr Chol subject to probation.

Mr Marron is due to hand down his sentence at midday.