Court orders fraudster to repay cash
A FORMER navy seaman used a Defence travel card to make false claims of more than $ 5000 for travel to attend fictional courses.
Gokhan Turkyilmaz, 32, faced Townsville Magistrates Court to be sentenced for 26 charges relating to defrauding the Australian Defence Force.
The charges included 22 counts of general dishonesty causing a loss, two counts of making false documents and two counts of using a forged document.
Turkyilmaz, an MMA fighter, was in the Royal Australian Navy at the time of the offences between October 2011 and March 2012.
Crown prosecutor Cath Ferguson said Turkyilmaz was issued with a Defence travel card because he was required to travel to attend courses for work.
The court heard Turkyilmaz withdrew unauthorised amounts from his Defence travel card, claimed travel to attend fictitious courses, made handwritten changes to documents to increase his travel allowance and used the card to purchase a flight for someone else.
“He was not required to undertake official travel at any point during the period and had no permission to make the withdrawals,” she said
“As a result of his misuse of the DTC, he incurred unauthorised expenditure … the Commonwealth has suffered a loss of $ 5307.47.”
Turkyilmaz’s solicitor Andrew Peel said Turkyilmaz served with the navy for eight years from the age of 18.
“He received the rank of leading seaman as well as pro- viding specialist training as a linguist interrogator and martial arts instructor,” he said.
“He’s in a defacto relationship, his first child is due in two weeks’ time and his partner has a child of a previous marriage who my client provides fatherly duties to, if I can describe it that way.”
Mr Peel said Turkyilmaz spent some time overseas and was unaware of the outstanding charges until he was served recently.
Acting Magistrate Susie Warrington said she accepted it was a timely plea of guilty given those circumstances.
“I have taken into account your history, you haven’t committed any further offences and you don’t have any history of a like nature, there’s no dishonest entries on your history so I do accept that this behaviour is out of character,” she said.
Turkyilmaz was fined $ 3500 for the 22 general dishonesty charges, $ 1000 for the two counts of making false documents and $ 1000 for the two counts of using a forged document.
He was also ordered to repay the Commonwealth $ 5307.47.