Man jailed for defrauding community of $2.7m
A man in WA has been jailed for seven years for defrauding the remote Aboriginal community of Warmun in the. Kimberley out of $2.7 million.
Craig Robert Dale, 58, was contracted to help the community rebuild after floods, and requested advance payments for work that was never carried out.
He had been originally contracted to build homes a school and a health clinic after there floods in 2011. He competed those works but then failed to complete other contracts between October 2013 and June 2014 to the value of $2.7m.
Trust exploited
He was charged in 2020 but then leaded guilty to 14 counts of fraud.
Delays prevented sentencing because Dale twice discharged his lawyer.
Judge David MacLean, sitting on the District Court, said Dale had exploited the trust of the community.
“You received money, you spent the money and repeated the process,” he said.
Great distress to elders
“You wasted the entirety of that money on gambling.”
The judge also ordered a compensation order against Dale for $2,770,275 to be paid back to the Warmun community.
The court was told his actions caused great distress among elders in the community.
An ABC Four Corners program in 2016 highlighted many of the then alleged crimes and that the money was part of government grants received to aid the rebuild.
