By PAUL MILLAR
A GEELONG tax agent lived the highlife at Crown Casino by drawing funds from trusting clients to feed a massive gambling addiction, the Geelong Magistrates Court heard yesterday.
Looking ashen faced after a night in custody, Kaylene Maree Hussen glanced over a Perspex screen toward family members as the court heard that she could have stolen up to $700,000 from clients, many of them elderly.
She has been charged with obtaining property by deception, obtaining financial advantage by deception, theft and making use of false documents.
Detective Senior Constable Paul Mitchell told the court that there were potentially almost 150 victims and that the 55-year-old mother of four adult children had also allegedly been operating a Ponzi-style scheme.
“The amount of charges could go to four or five per victim, so we are looking at potentially up to 400 to 500 charges,” the detective senior constable said.
The investigator said it would take some time to determine how many of Hussen’s clients were also victims.
“We will not know a correct figure for a long-time but from 23 victims it’s over $200,000,” he said.
Records obtained from Crown Casino showed that since 2002 Hussen and her husband had lost more than $1million at the gambling centre, the court heard.
“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 this finally over,” the detective added.
Evidence 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.
During the bail application hearing, it was revealed she had made full admissions about the scam but had been protective of her family and shed no blame on her husband, who had been to the casino when she was on her gambling sprees.
She was granted bail on the understanding that she not attend gaming venues, not engage in taxation matters, not leave Victoria and that she abide at her son’s home in Torquay.
She is on a $10,000 surety and will face court again on April 10.
