STATE OF TASMANIA v NAOMI RUTH BRIGGS 22 JUNE 2026
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE SHANAHAN CJ
Naomi Ruth Briggs, you have been convicted after trial by jury of fraud contrary to s 253A of the Criminal Code 1924. At the heart of this type of offending is that a person with intent to defraud, or by deceit or by any fraudulent means, gains a benefit or causes a detriment to any person.
In the period nominated in the indictment, being16 September 2013 and 24 April 2019, you were the person appointed by the Guardianship and Administration Board as administrator of your grandmother’s, Ms Elisabeth Brigg’s, affairs.
Being an administrator is a very important position characterised by significant and continuing trust invariably by a vulnerable person no longer able to help him or herself.
You properly accepted at trial, through your counsel, that, as your grandmother’s administrator, you had sole control of your grandmother’s funds. Your grandmother operated a Westpac Bank savings account and that is the account named in the indictment. As part of the Board’s order appointing you administrator, you were given authority to access money in that account and to have control over it.
This matter was tried in August 2025 and it is extremely disappointing that the sentencing process has taken almost a year to complete despite the Court’s best efforts to resolve the matter in a timely way. I now turn to the facts.
In about June 2013, Elisabeth Briggs, your grandmother, was admitted to the Roy Fagan Centre when she was diagnosed with vascular and Alzheimer’s dementia.
An application for an emergency guardianship order was made by a social worker at the Roy Fagan Centre and what was granted by the Board on the 6 June 2013 so that your grandmother could stay at that facility until early August 2013.
On 9 July 2013, you applied to be appointed the guardian and administrator of your grandmother’s affairs. In that application you said that you believed that your grandmother was not able to make the right decisions and that her dementia was affecting her ability to manage her finances. You were clearly aware of your grandmother’s vulnerability.
In your application you stated that you had spoken to her grandmother about the application and that your grandmother was more than happy for you to do it, and that you would act in the very best interests of your grandmother and on your grandmother’s behalf. That might be described as in the nature of a promise that you would honour your grandmother’s trust.
You signed the declaration in the application, acknowledging that you agreed to undertake duties in accordance with the Guardianship and Administration Act in relation to being both your grandmother’s guardian and administrator.
On 31 July 2013, the Board, after a hearing, appointed you as your grandmother’s administrator for a three year period, up to 30 July 2016, as well as her guardian. The guardianship order was made only for 12 months, and was limited to decisions as to where your grandmother lived.
At that hearing in July 2013 you signed a document called an acknowledgement of the responsibilities of an administrator. Those obligations included the primary obligations of an administrator to exercise the power of administration in the interests of the person under administration and that any monies were to be used for the benefit of that person.
There was an exception for expenditure when the Board approved a gift. There was an obligation to keep accurate records of receipts and expenses relating to your grandmother’s estate and to submit an annual report every 12 months as and when required by the Board.
Whatever your awareness or understanding of the effect of that acknowledgement I find beyond any reasonable doubt that you understood the primary elements of the role of administrator because that is evident from your application for appointment. It is also evident from your contact with the Board over the period of that appointment.
The evidence at trial suggested that the Board in the years 2013 to 2016 did not have a very strict oversight of these arrangements, and that is to be regretted. There appears to have been some confusion by you as to the obligation to keep receipts and make reports. You gave evidence of a box of receipts that was presented to the Board and that you were told that the receipts were not necessary. I do not accept, and reject, that explanation because it was directly contrary to the obligations, administered by the Board, that were imposed on you as an administrator and notified to you upon your appointment.
On 23 August 2013, your grandmother moved into St Ann’s nursing home.
As administrator you gave evidence that you made an initial payment of $8,000 to cover future fees on the 26 August 2013. That amount was not receipted and no evidence of receipts or any other documentary evidence was provided to the Board in that regard. Nursing home payments started at around $2,400 per month and increased to about $2,700 per month.
Your grandmother operated a Westpac Bank savings account, as I have said. This is the account that you were given authority to access and control. Your grandmother was receiving a Centrelink pension, which in August 2013 was some $750 per fortnight and had two direct debits for insurance for $50 a fortnight, each coming out of her account.
Your grandmother owned a home at Glenorchy. In March 2014, that home was sold and the net proceeds were $266,959.45.
Initially you gave the nursing home the entire sale proceeds of your grandmother’s house to credit to your grandmother’s account, but after engaging with the Board, it was agreed that you would invest the bulk of that money in term deposits. This demonstrates that you could seek and obtain advice from the Board as required. It also indicates that at this stage in early 2014 you were not seeking control of those funds for your personal benefit.
On 4 April 2014, you set up two term deposits with Westpac Bank, one for $140,000 and one for $100,000.
When both term deposits matured or were withdrawn early by you, all of the money was transferred back into your grandmother’s Westpac account. At or about this time you opened another Westpac account in your grandmother’s name.
Once the monies were in those accounts, some of it was used to pay St Ann’s Nursing Home fees. Those payments were receipted and evidence was lead at trial to substantiate those payments. However, the bulk of the funds were withdrawn by you in cash or by bank cheque, hence there was a lack of documentation as to the purpose of those withdrawals. That method of withdrawing monies is curious in circumstances where you had an obligation to account for such expenditure and left no record as to the purpose or object of the transactions.
It was the State’s case at trial that those monies were not withdrawn for the benefit of your grandmother, and in circumstances where there was no evidence that those monies had been disbursed in your grandmother’s interest and, in circumstances where you chose to give evidence, and no credible explanation was proffered by you as to how those monies were spent, I accept and find beyond a reasonable doubt that you must be sentenced on that basis.
As administrator you were required to lodge annual reports with the Board which provided information about your grandmother’s financial position. There was some evidence that you were confused about this obligation and further evidence that the Board’s administration in that regard could have been more engaged.
On 30 May 2016, you lodged annual reports, for 2014, 2015 and 2016, under cover of a statutory declaration in which you declared that the account information you had provided was true and correct as at 31 July in each of those three years. In each of these returns, you told the Board that your grandmother’s expenses, leaving aside the nursing home fees, for those years was $4,500. In the 2015 report, you disclosed the existence of the two term deposits of $140,000 and $100,000.
On 29 July 2016, the Board extended the administration order in your favour to continue until 28 July 2019. The order was in the same terms except that you were authorised to distribute gifts from your grandmother’s estate to a maximum of $500 provided there were sufficient funds to do so.
Whatever the case in relation to this aspect of your administration of your grandmother’s affairs it does not detract from the essential element that you knew the monies were for your grandmother’s benefit not yours. There was evidence that from about July 2017 until November 2018 the Board sent you letters, and spoke to you, about annual reports that had not been completed, and requested you to provide financial documentation and bank statements relating to the term deposits and your grandmother’s Westpac Bank accounts.
Very little of that requested information was provided and the Board, of its own motion, listed the matter for hearing to review the administration order. That was scheduled for the 8 February 2019. On the same day of the hearing, you lodged an annual report the subject of a statutory declaration for the period to 7 February 2019. In that report, you stated that the $140,000 was still invested in a term deposit. Evidence led at trial showed that term deposit had matured on the 6 October 2017.
Between the 16 September 2013 and the 24 April 2019, there were some 170 transactions by you involving your grandmother’s Westpac Bank accounts. That is a very large number of transactions, an average of almost 30 transactions a year.
It is hard to imagine how anyone conducting that number of transactions over that period could be unaware of the fact and purpose of those transactions, I find beyond a reasonable doubt that you made, and were aware of the purpose and object of, those transactions.
The Board hearing on the 8 February 2019 was adjourned as it received new information on the day of the hearing.
A compliance officer wrote to you in February and March 2019, advising you that he required further information and documentation about how the proceeds of your grandmother’s home had been dealt with, and seeking bank statements relating to the term deposits and savings account.
The Board by its own motion on the 10 May 2019, revoked your appointment as administrator and appointed the public trustee in your place and directed it to investigate how the proceeds from the sale of your grandmother’s house had been dealt with.
You met with the public trustee on 29 January 2020. You told the public trustee that prior to the sale of your grandmother’s house there were many bills that needed to be paid. and that your mother, Kathleen Briggs, paid all of these bills and you reimbursed her. This was an amount of $16,000
You failed to provide the receipts for the expenditure or the requested bank documentation sought by the public trustee, and the public trustee referred the matter to Tasmania Police. The State’s case was that by the end of the period on the indictment, your grandmother’s nursing home fees were about $6,200 in arrears, and there was only $19.87 in Elisabeth Brigg’s Westpac Bank account.
In many ways the nature of your responsibilities as an administrator can be reduced to a very simple equation, you were given control of your grandmother’s money in order to look after her, and she trusted you to do so even where she was unable to do so herself. You only gained access to your grandmother’s funds because of your appointment. Monies could not be withdrawn from your grandmother’s account other than by you as administrator.
By the jury’s verdict they found that through your appointment you acquired the benefit of the monies held in your grandmother’s Westpac Bank accounts to your grandmother’s detriment when you knew you were not entitled to those monies. I find beyond any reasonable doubt that you were always aware that your grandmother’s money was not yours and that that your control of those monies was for your grandmother’s benefit, not yours.
You were indicted on the basis that you obtained all or part of the $228,750.34 held in your grandmother’s account. With regard to the amount upon which you are to be sentenced the State made submissions on 17 October 2025 that the amount of unauthorised transactions amounted to $236,060.75 which amount it was said should be reduced by the amounts declared to the Board as expenses legitimately incurred on behalf of your grandmother, which were calculated as $17,744.00, which left a total of $218,316.75. On that occasion your counsel indicated that the amount of $218,316.75 was disputed.
The State submitted that I cannot be satisfied from the evidence that $16,000 was spent on getting your grandmother’s house ready for sale.
Equally, it was said (Transcript 17.10.25 at p 11) that I cannot be satisfied that the initial payment of an amount of “eight thousand dollars – odd” was made to the nursing home.
I was assured by the parties that no further evidence is available on this issue such that a disputed facts hearing would be entirely redundant.
In those circumstances, I am left with a difference between the parties of some $24,000 as to the amount upon which you are to be sentenced, in circumstances where the parties remain in dispute but no further hearing will have any utility and the parties essentially leave the Court to resolve the matter.
A sentencing court must not take into account matters adverse to an accused unless they are proved beyond reasonable doubt, but matters in favour of an accused need only be proved on the balance of probabilities: R v Olbrich (1999) 199 CLR 270 per Gleeson CJ, Gaudron, Hayne and Callinan JJ at [27], citing R v Storey [1998] 1 VR 359 at 369.
An offender should be given the benefit of any doubt in respect of facts raised in mitigation of the offence but disputed by the prosecution. However, a judge who has not been persuaded by a mitigating assertion may reject it after having given the offender the opportunity to call evidence to support it. The amounts the subject in the indictment were all in issue at trial. You had the opportunity to adduce any relevant evidence at trial. No further relevant evidence has been identified or proffered to the Court.
I note the report provided on your behalf by Dr Jennifer Wright, forensic psychologist, dated 9 April 2026 which refers to the amount of $218,316.75 said to be calculated by subtracting the receipted amounts paid by you on your grandmother’s behalf for her care. However, Dr Wright also refers to the amount of $16,000 about which you and your mother gave evidence at trial, said to be the sum expended on preparing your grandmother’s house for sale. It is on that basis that you have approached the Court in the context of sentence.
The initial deposit of the whole of the proceeds of your grandmother’s house following sale into the nursing home account in early 2014, may suggest that your primary offending occurred later. Whilst there was some ambiguity around the evidence of what was spent on preparing your grandmother’s house for sale, because of the absence of receipts, your mother corroborated your evidence on this point.
I note the absence of any receipts or documentation provided to the Board but also confirm that the monies were paid by you reimbursing your mother, hence you were not the primary receipt holder. I am, on the balance of probabilities, prepared to accept that some monies were spent on that house to prepare it for sale and the expenditure of $16,000 does not, on that balance, appear to be inconsistent with what would be required to put an elderly person’s home in order for sale.
I am not, however, prepared to accept that any monies that are said to have been paid to St Ann’s were not receipted, or if made that a record was not kept. There was a significant amount of evidence at trial regarding the receipted sums paid to St Ann’s. Even in circumstances where a business is changing hands, and new systems may be being introduced or staff appointed, the receipting of payments is an essential commercial practice and requirement.
I have to quantify an amount for the purposes of sentence, taking the parties’ dispute into account, in circumstances where the evidence adduced provides little assistance. I am obliged to sentence you consistently with the jury’s verdict and the evidence adduced at trial.
The absence of any explanation or documentation demonstrating how the unaccounted for funds were disbursed and the lack of particularity as a result, makes the task of calculating that amount and sentencing you more difficult.
The lengthy delay between the period of your offending and trial has made any accounting difficult and has further obscured your conduct and motivation. I find that you appropriated $202,316.75 for your own benefit, being the sum calculated by the State less the amount of $16,000 used to prepare your grandmother’s home for sale. I note that there is no compensation order sought.
The State submitted that your offending was objectively very serious. I accept that your grandmother placed her trust in you and she did so when she was vulnerable, aged and ill, and that does make your offending very serious. I also accept and will sentence you on the basis that the 170 transactions over the relevant period mean that you must have been aware of the purpose and intent of those transactions. Whilst there may have been some administrative inaction in the Board during parts of this period it was your obligation to look after your grandmother’s interests.
The State also observes that you had many opportunities to engage with the Board and put the affairs of your administration of your grandmother’s affairs in order but failed to do so. These were periods contemporaneous with many of the 170 transactions when records were available and recollections of relevant events would have been sharper. On any account you failed to do so. In that regard I note that the defalcations on your grandmother’s accounts only ceased when the money had run out and there was nothing left to take.
It was your mother, Kathleen Briggs who was the beneficiary of her mother’s will. Your grandmother was entitled to leave her estate to the person of her choice. In that regard it is not to the point that your mother chose to divide her mother’s estate amongst her children.
You have no relevant prior convictions and are otherwise a person of good character. However, that is to be balanced against the persistent and lengthy nature of your offending and your failure to meet your obligations as an administrator.
Upon an application by your counsel I sought a home detention assessment report which I have received dated 22 September 2025. The report found you were suitable for a single home detention option, being option 2. It found you unsuitable for community supervision and community service.
The effect of option 2 would be to require you to remain in your home between 6:00 pm and 6:00 am. It is said that option is suitable because it would allow “Ms Briggs sufficient time to address her own mental health through exercise”. The sentencing process has many integers and your rehabilitation is only one of those matters. As Dr Wright opines (at [32]) you are currently socially isolative and tend to remain in your home unless motivated to leave. The State submit that the proposed conditions in option 2 would mean, in effect that except for being at home overnight you will be free to move about the community, and the option has no punitive effect. Ultimately, I accept that submission. General and specific deterrence requires more than an extremely limited home detention.
You were born and raised in Tasmania. You enjoyed a good upbringing provided solely by your mother, you remain in a close relationship with your mother. You are the full time parent of two teenage children both with identified barriers to attending school regularly. Your daughter suffers significant social and mental health concerns and has a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Your son has a diagnosis of ADHD and autism. I am advised by Community Corrections that you are effectively “on call” each day to support the school to regulate and collect him from classes. The report indicates that you do “not have any close friends or family who are able to assist with …[your]… two children during their heightened states”. The report notes that the children’s father is “now working to building a relationship with the children” having not been involved in their lives for many years.
You reside in a private rental and have done so for 13 years, you have an ongoing lease.
You completed school to year 12 and have good literacy levels and reported good relationships with peers and teachers.
You have completed further studies and have a certificate IV in disability as well as training in trauma informed practices, certification to dispense medicine and emergency response. You attended your final years of education through online and distance learning as you had your children by that time.
You currently receive Centrelink allowance and Child Support payments. It is reported that you advise of no significant personal debts or gambling concerns. There were no significant issues reported with regard to illegal substances or alcohol.
In the home detention assessment report in the section marked “attitude and responses toward offending behaviour” your reported responses reveal a complete lack of acceptance of responsibility for the offending as found by the jury. It is reported that you say that the charges were of no fault of your own and were due to administrative and accounting errors on the part of the estate managers and you claimed that receipts or payments submitted to the relevant departments had gone missing. That lack of insight into your offending reveals no remorse. In that regard, I also note that repeated offending over a lengthy period tends to preclude any claim of genuine remorse: DPP v Harrington [2017] TASCCA 4 per Pearce J at [83], and in this case the 170 transactions involved were spread out over a period of some 5 and a half years.
Dr Wright also reports, at [26], your contention that you “had not intentionally stolen the large amount of money that was unaccounted for”. At least two matters emerge from that, first that you acknowledge that there is a large amount of money that is unaccounted for, and second that you continue to seek to avoid the jury’s verdict in this matter. As I have explained my task is to sentence you on the basis of that verdict. Putting to one side your lack of remorse and your complaints as to the responsibilities of others, you have provided no explanation to Dr Wright, in circumstances where you must know, being the only person who operated the accounts, where the unaccounted money went.
The absence of any explanation puts the Court in an difficult position the jury have found you guilty of the offending but you do not acknowledge or explain it. In those circumstances it is important to consider your psychiatric health.
Dr Wright has provided a lengthy report dated 6 April 2026.
To the extent that any explanation in respect of our offending emerges it appears in paragraph [29] where Dr Wright notes that “throughout the period between 2012 and 2016 …[you were]… additionally preoccupied with …[your]…. children’s needs, ….[your]…. Family court proceedings with …[your] …. ex-partner and dealing with his behaviour towards herself and the children, and …[you were] …. attacked by a young client in 2018 and developed PTSD as a result. All of these factors lead to a “haphazard approach at best to managing her grandmother’s finances” and that you were “significantly distracted with multiple other life stressors throughout this time frame”.
Dr Wright considers the application of the six Verdins principles the application of which can have a mitigatory effect and reduce your culpability.
In respect of the first principle, it generally relates to whether you were suffering from a mental health condition that had the effect of impairing your ability to exercise appropriate judgment, to make calm and rational choices or to think clearly impairing your ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of your conduct. Dr Wright finds that you had no active symptoms of any mental disease during the majority of the time period during which your offending occurred, 2013 – 2019. I have discounted Dr Wright’s observations about your organisational skills and your attitude to your role as administrator, those not being linked to a diagnose mental illness. I note Dr Wright’s conclusion that whilst your diagnosis of PTSD may be relevant from 2018 onwards, that prior to that time “there is no clear nexus between mental health symptoms and your offending behaviour. Considerations under this principle can have only marginal impact on the sentencing process as much of your offending was complete prior to your diagnosis of PTSD.
The second Verdins principle goes to whether your current mental health may impact upon the nature of the sentence imposed and the conditions served. Dr Wright states, you have “a severe anxiety disorder (PTSD) associated with an event in her workplace where she felt fear of being harmed/killed.” As a result you are, as I have already noted, “socially isolative” and tend to remain in your] home unless motivated to leave. It is reported that you are at a low risk of re-offending. In that regard I note that the circumstances of your offending gave you access to someone else’s funds in a manner which is not likely to recur. I have taken these observations into account.
Verdins principles 3 and 4 relate to whether the need for general, and or specific, deterrence is moderated or eliminated as a sentencing consideration as a consequence of your symptoms. Given that the primary period of your offending was not affected by a diagnosis of mental illness these matters remain central sentencing considerations. To the extent that Dr Wright’s diagnosis in 2018 limits that observation I have taken it into account.
Principles 5 and 6 go to whether a mental health diagnosis at the date of sentencing means that a sentence will weigh more heavily upon you than a person of normal health. I note Dr Wright’s opinion that you would find a period of imprisonment very difficult because of two factors one being your mental health and the second being separated from your children. I have taken the first matter into account in this regard.
In mitigation it was put that you were relatively young at the time of the offending. This was at a time when it was said that you were coping with giving birth to two children and being a single mother. It was said that may have impacted on your understanding and organisational skills.
I note that you have dyslexia and difficulty with reading.
I was told that you do not have any issues with substance abuse and that you use alcohol socially. It was confirmed that you do not have pro-criminal associates, and have no gambling problems.
Whilst I was told that you were involved in Family Court proceedings with an ex partner I was not given any account of any legal or other costs associated with that process.
It was put that by the time we get to 2018, you have been assaulted at work and are suffering from PTSD and trying to explain what happened in the preceding years in the context of your administration of your grandmother’s affairs. I am told that at this stage you are not coping you, had just shut down.
There is nothing to explain the missing money but I am told that there is no evidence of a lavish life style.
It was put that you now suffer from PTSD but have proffered no explanation as to where the missing money has been spent.
It is clear that, whilst you may suffer from PTSD, you are unprepared to accept any responsibility for this offending. That raises the importance of general and specific deterrence in the sentencing process. It is for that reason that you have been provided so many opportunities to provide an account of your offending.
Whatever attitude your mother may take to your offending it is your grandmother who was the primary victim in your offending who has been denied the opportunity to bequeath her estate as she wished. What your mother has chosen to do with what was bequeathed to her by your grandmother is not to the point, nor is the impact of your offending on your grandmother’s quality of life which as I understand it was quarantined by her care at the nursing home.
There are growing community concerns around the incidence of intergenerational theft and abuse where comparisons are regularly made about the wealth of older Australians.
It was put on your behalf that you are an unsophisticated person whose has suffered from difficulties and now can provide no explanation for your offending. Of course that doesn’t engage your refusal to accept any responsibility for your offending. You have significant parental responsibilities for your children now aged 16 and 17.
Naomi Ruth Briggs, you have been convicted following trial of an offence in breach of s 253A of the Criminal Code in amount of $202,316.75. Your offending has been committed over a lengthy period of more than five and a half years and was a gross breach of trust. You have shown no remorse for your conduct, provided no explanation despite exhaustive opportunities to do so, and have shown little insight into your offending.
The opportunities to provide an explanation for your offending were proffered to, amongst other things, give the Court a compass when seeking to fashion and impose a sentence. In the absence of knowing the purpose for which you used the money that you took from your grandmother I cannot fashion a sentence that addresses the underlying causes of your offending.
Community Corrections have reported that you are unsuitable for both community supervision and community service. I accept the State’s submission that your offending is too serious to be dealt with within the imitations of option 2 in the home detention assessment report.
I have indicated throughout the sentencing process that an immediate term of imprisonment was a sentencing option. I sought further details and explanations of your offending in order to assess what alternatives might be available to the Court. No explanation has been provided, and there are no alternatives. Indeed your lack of remorse and insight emphasises, rather than discount, the need for general and specific deterrence even applying the limited operation of the Verdins principles after 2018 as discussed.
You were convicted after trial there is no discount applicable in this matter.
A term of immediate imprisonment is necessary to express the need for general and specific deterrence in respect of the sheer scale of your offending. The only remaining issue is whether a portion of your sentence should be suspended. A period of suspension may arise in circumstances where there are mitigating features based on the underlying reasons for offending. In this case, I have no such explanation and in the absence of any remorse or insight there is no basis for suspending any part of your sentence.
I impose a single sentence. I sentence you to two years and six months’ imprisonment to commence immediately. I make you eligible for parole. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served half of that sentence.