By PAUL MILLAR
A TAX agent who allegedly fleeced trusting clients is expected to face up to 1200 charges relating to the theft of almost $2 million.
Kaylene Maree Hussen was originally charged with nine offences connected to the fraudulent use of clients’ money, with police claiming she had a massive gambling problem.
Investigators have had to move out of the Geelong police station to the Waurn Ponds complex to collate a brief of evidence, which is likely to reach 9000 pages.
It was initially argued that up to $700,000 had been stolen from clients of the 55-year-old mother of four adult children.
Police will allege that the figure has now blown out to almost $2 million with around 200 victims, many of them elderly.
She has already been charged with obtaining property by deception, obtaining financial advantage by deception, theft and making use of false documents.
Earlier this year Detective Senior Constable Paul Mitchell told the Geelong Magistrates Court “that records obtained from Crown Casino showed that since 2002 Hussen and her husband had lost more than $1 million at the gambling centre.”
“In 2014, she spent 104 days at Crown Casino and was there for up to five hours at a time and she had accumulated three million points on her Crown card,” he said.
“She has admitted to us that she has an extreme gambling problem … it appeared to be of some relief that it’s finally over,” the detective added.
Evidence, he alleged, would show that money transferred from the accounts of her clients to her own trust account coincided with her visits to the casino, the court heard in January.
Ms Hussen is currently on bail, on condition that she not engage in taxation matters, not leave Victoria and that she abide at her son’s home in Torquay.
She is due to face the Geelong Magistrates Court on 16 October for a committal mention hearing.
