STATE OF TASMANIA v KANE SCOTT DALLOW 11 FEBRUARY 2026
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Kane Dallow, you plead guilty to 28 charges across three indictments. In all there are 11 counts of attempting to commit fraud, five counts of fraud, seven counts of forgery, three counts of uttering and two counts of perverting justice. Each indictment covers separate offending.
The first series of offences were committed between May 2018 and May 2019. On 13 separate occasions during that period you, using the names and personal details of other people you had met or worked with, dishonestly applied to various financial institutions for credit cards of differing types with credit limits ranging from $2,000 to $50,000. On all but three of these occasions the applications were declined. However you were issued with a fuel card, an American Express Card and a Mastercard on which you incurred debts of $2,498.36, $7,984.69 and $10,163.43 respectively. On 7 December 2018 you dishonestly applied to MyState Bank Ltd for a loan of $10,000 using false financial information to demonstrate your ability to repay the loan. The loan was declined. On 17 December 2018 you dishonestly used false details and forged documents to apply to Commit Co Pty Ltd for a loan of $6,000. A loan of $2,200 was approved and you collected that sum in cash the same day.
Between 27 and 29 November 2018 you dishonestly used false personal and financial information to obtain a loan from Toyota Finance to purchase a car for $59,507.24. By early 2019 you had missed four payments and defaulted on the loan. When you were sent a default notice you complained to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority falsely claiming that the payments had been made. On 8 April 2019, to support your claims, you submitted one Australia Post receipt and three National Australia Bank receipts all of which you had forged. You compounded your dishonesty by then, on 1 May 2019, submitting a report from a credit reporting agency and, on 31 May 2019, a National Australia Bank account balance summary, both of which you had forged.
Your dishonesty was discovered by others and you were interviewed by the police on 1 June 2020. After some initial denials you admitted what you had done.
The charge on the second indictment is perverting justice. It is offending of a different character. In and prior to 2020 you were holding yourself out as a journalist and operating a website called “TAS News 24”. In December 2020 proceedings were commenced against you in the Federal Court for, in substance, defamation. A statement of claim was filed on behalf of the applicant on 7 December 2020. The Court made interim and interlocutory orders restraining you from publication of two video articles you had produced and requiring removal of the videos from your website. You did not file a defence to the claim and on 19 February 2021 the Court ordered that the injunction be made permanent and that the applicant recover from you damages to be assessed. Despite court orders prohibiting you from doing so you deliberately continued to publish the offending material. On 5 March 2021 you were found guilty of two charges of contempt. That did not stop you. On 7 or 8 March 2021 you again intentionally disobeyed the order made on 19 February 2021 by republishing the video and scandalising the court. On 12 March 2021 an application was made for a declaration that you were guilty of two more instances of contempt. In response to that application you, on 24 March 2021, made and filed an affidavit in the Federal Court. The charge of perverting justice arises because one of the annexures to the affidavit was a document purported by you to be an affidavit sworn by a Hannah Kilks. There was, in fact, no affidavit sworn by any such person. The document you annexed to your affidavit was fabricated by you and was signed by a different person in the presence of a Justice of the Peace at your instigation. The police found no record that a person named Hannah Kilks existed. By filing this fabricated affidavit as part of your attempt to defeat the contempt application, you perverted justice. However, your attempt was singularly unsuccessful. On 17 May 2021 you were found guilty of those two further charges of contempt. Whether you succeeded in perverting justice is irrelevant to your guilt of the charge, although it may be relevant to sentence. The affidavit was not taken into account by the judge who found you guilty of those charges of contempt. His Honour’s reasons record that you elected to not adduce any evidence in your defence. Perverting justice is regarded as serious because it undermines the integrity of the justice system. Persons who are convicted of the crime are almost always sentenced to imprisonment, not only for punishment, but to send a message to those who might be tempted to act as you did that prison is the likely outcome. It is relevant to totality that, on 28 June 2021, the Federal Court committed you to imprisonment for nine months for the four charges of contempt. The falsity of the affidavit was not a circumstance taken into account in determining the sentence for contempt. It is separate offending which adds to your overall culpability for your conduct arising from the court proceedings.
The third indictment covers crimes committed in early 2023, following your release from prison. On 28 November 2022 your driver licence was suspended by the Monetary Penalties Enforcement Service. When you were pulled over by the police on 16 February 2023 they informed you that your driver licence was suspended and gave you a chance to arrange to pay your unpaid fines before deciding whether to charge you with driving whilst suspended. Instead of paying the fines you, on 28 February 2023, sent a detailed email to MPES falsely claiming that your outstanding fines were being challenged in court and asking that your licence be reinstated. You threatened legal action unless your request was complied with. On 1 March 2023, in support of that request, you sent two documents, one purporting to be a letter from your lawyer and the other an application to set aside an infringement notice penalty. Both documents were forged by you. You perverted justice by submitting the documents in a dishonest attempt to avoid a charge for the driving infringement on 16 February 2023. This time the attempt did succeed. Your suspension was revoked and because of that the police decided to not charge you.
Finally, in March 2023 your credit record with reporting agency Equifax was such that applications to financial institutions for credit or loans would not succeed. As a result you wrote to that organisation asking that the credit records be corrected or removed falsely claiming that some entries were disputed. The request was accompanied by two documents both of which you had forged. The first was a document dated 31 January 2023 signed by you purporting to be an application to the Magistrates Court in its civil jurisdiction to vary or set aside an order. The second document purports to be an order of a Magistrates Court requiring, amongst other things, that Equifax Credit Bureau amend and remove credit details adverse to you. These are serious matters. Both documents are detailed, display planning and some knowledge of court processes, and contain many serious falsehoods. The application document bears a false stamp of the “Magistrates Court Launceston”. The court order document is completely false, highly dishonest and amounts to an impersonation of a court making an order. It also bears a stamp and purports to record findings of a real named magistrate after considering evidence.
You are now aged 45. You first appeared in this Court on some of these charges on 11 October 2021. You continued to appear until you failed to answer your bail on 22 April 2024. You were arrested and taken into custody on 19 November 2025 and extradited from Queensland where you had been living with your husband and your daughter who is now aged four. You have a long history of dishonesty commencing in about 1999 in South Australia with passing valueless cheques. Between then and about 2016 your record includes convictions for representing a police officer, false pretences, obtaining a financial advantage, deception, giving false details, dishonestly dealing with property and dishonestly manipulating machines. You served terms of imprisonment in that State. On 6 September 2019 you were sentenced by a magistrate in this State to a partially suspended term for dishonestly acquiring a financial advantage.
You provided this Court with a letter which described a difficult childhood which you say was characterised by neglect and abuse. As a teen you struggled with your sexuality and social isolation. These things combined to lead you withdraw into a world of unrealistic expectations and a tendency to dishonesty to fulfil them. You attribute your dishonesty in 2018 to a need for money to keep up appearances as a journalist. That does not lessen the seriousness of your conduct. Although the amount of money you obtained was relatively modest compared to some cases, it was not for want of trying. You demonstrated thorough and repeated dishonesty for about a year. Your conduct during the Federal Court proceedings manifested a complete disregard for the law, the integrity of the proceedings and the authority of the court. Many of the matters you now advance to this Court were conveyed to the Federal Court to be taken into account in the contempt sentence. You say that prison was difficult for you. You suffered serious injuries as a result of an assault perpetrated by other prisoners. You are now held in protective custody. However that sentence, and the difficult conditions you experienced while serving it, did not deter you from the further dishonesty you displayed following your release. I regard your impersonation of the court as particularly serious. Imprisonment will also be difficult for your family but, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances, the impact on family is part of the price to be paid for serious crimes. You claim to have mended your ways but you will have to demonstrate that with your conduct.
You are to be sentenced on the basis that you have repaid the loss which was suffered by Toyota Finance after the vehicle you fraudulently obtained was auctioned. There is some dispute about that but that dispute can be resolved in other circumstances. The only other mitigating factor is your plea of guilty. It will result in a reduction in the sentence which otherwise would have been imposed. It has avoided the need for what would have been a complex and lengthy trial requiring the allocation of considerable resources. It indicates some acceptance of responsibility although any claim to genuine remorse is excluded by your repeated dishonesty and the fact that you absconded from the jurisdiction. I take into account that you have already served a term of imprisonment for conduct related to the Federal Court proceedings. I will impose separate single sentences on each indictment but order some concurrency to result in a sentence which is a fair and just reflection of your total criminal responsibility. I will also allow for some eligibility for parole but only after having served the total term which adequately reflects the need for punishment and deterrence arising from the circumstances I have described. I make compensation orders in favour of Toyota Finance Australia Ltd, Commit Co Pty Ltd, American Express Australia Ltd and Macquarie Bank Ltd and adjourn the further terms of those orders to a date to be fixed.
On 10 February 2026 you were sentenced by a magistrate for separate offending to imprisonment for six months from 19 November 2025, the date you were taken into custody in Queensland. Three months of that term was suspended. I take that sentence into account also in determining the appropriate total sentence.
Kane Dallow, on indictment 42/2023, the 2018 dishonesty, you are convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for 15 months cumulative to the sentence imposed by the magistrate on 10 February 2026. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served nine months of that term. On indictment 14/2022, the single charge of pervert justice, you are convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for six months cumulative to the term just imposed. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served half of that term. On indictment 500/2025, the 2023 crimes, you are convicted on each count. You are sentenced to imprisonment for nine months cumulative to indictment 42/2023 but concurrently with indictment 14/2022. I order that you not be eligible for parole until having served six months of that term. The result is a total term of two years cumulative to the sentence imposed by the magistrate on 10 February 2026 with eligibility for parole after one year and three months of that term.