STATE OF TASMANIA v MALCOLM JOHN PILGRIM 28 OCTOBER 2019
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BLOW CJ
Malcolm John Pilgrim, you have pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawfully setting fire to property and to a charge of attempting to dishonestly acquire a financial advantage. These charges relate to an unsuccessful attempt to defraud an insurance company. In March of last year, you were living with a partner who had a car that was in very poor mechanical condition. You told the police at one stage that the motor was no good, or words to that effect, because it had been run without oil. Your partner had the idea of taking the car to the bush, setting fire to it, pretending that it had been stolen, and claiming on her car insurance policy. You and she did what she had proposed. You travelled to a place on the east coast, set fire to the vehicle, returned home, and pretended that the vehicle had been stolen. Your partner claimed on her insurance policy. If the insurance company had decided to pay out, she would have received $23,100. However the people from the insurance company became suspicious. Reading between the lines, it looks as though it was the sort of vehicle that is very hard to steal, and a locksmith subsequently said that it would have needed a key to move the vehicle. When the police became involved, your partner told the police that she had both the keys to the vehicle all the time.
The people from the insurance company engaged an investigator. The police were contacted. They checked the mobile phone movements of your partner’s mobile phone and your own. They interviewed you. They also attached a listening device to your vehicle. When the police interviewed you and told you what they had found out about the movements of your mobile phone, you confessed to this. But your partner did not. The insurance company did not pay any money out. It incurred expense in private investigator’s fees, and I will be making a compensation order that will probably result in you paying those fees, or perhaps half of them.
Because of a provision in the Criminal Code [s 267(1)], you and your partner are both guilty of the crime of unlawfully setting fire to property, even though it was your partner’s property. Ordinarily people are entitled to burn their own property, but it is a crime when they do that for the purposes of insurance fraud.
Your partner pleaded guilty before another judge a few weeks ago and was given a wholly suspended sentence of six months’ imprisonment. The sentencing judge indicated that he would probably have required her to undertake some community service but for the state of her health.
Obviously I need to decide whether to give you a similar sentence or one that is a little different. There are a few points of distinction between your situation and your partner’s. It was her idea, and she was the one who was going to get the money. Nevertheless you were a full participant in the fraud. You confessed your involvement to the police, but she did not. You both pleaded guilty at a late stage, but you pleaded guilty at a later stage than her, when the matter was days away from trial and had been substantially prepared for trial. Your plea of guilty does count in your favour because you saved the State the cost and inconvenience of a trial. But it carries less weight than your now former partner’s plea, given that she pleaded at a somewhat earlier stage.
You are no longer living with this woman. You now have work as a truck driver which requires you to work on the mainland for months at a time. If I require you to perform any community service or to serve any period of home detention, that job would be at risk. You have reached the age of 48 with no significant convictions. What you did was out of character. Your partner similarly had reached her 50s with no significant convictions, and what she did was out of character for her too.
All things considered, I think it would be too harsh for me to impose a sentence that placed your employment at risk. Given your prior good record, and the other circumstances that I have mentioned, I think it is appropriate that you have the same sentence as your partner.
I convict you and sentence you to six months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended on condition that you are not to commit any offence punishable by imprisonment for a period of 18 months from today. I order that you pay compensation to Insurance Australia Limited in a sum to be assessed in respect of its loss, and I adjourn the assessment of that compensation sine die.