A dishonest restaurant and gift store owner who attempted to defraud the ATO of more than $820,000 was sentenced to five years in prison.
The Artel in McLaren Vale, south of Adelaide, was operated by Brad Austin Redman, 41, but in 2016 and 2017, he filed over 20 fake business activity declarations.
Redman falsely claimed that his company had generated $19 million in revenue at that period when, in fact, it had generated just $500,000.
He obtained credits and GST refunds from the ATO totaling over $600,000 that his company wasn’t entitled to. He attempted to defraud taxpayers of $820,000 in total.
The money was first utilised for the company, but Redman subsequently spent it on a $30,000 BMW and a vacation to Melbourne.
He falsely claimed that both he and his wife had cancer and needed treatment when his falsehoods began to come out.
The father of two admitted to using a fake document, trying to get a financial advantage via fraud, and achieving a financial benefit through deception.
He made $110,000 while working as a cook in the mines of Western Australia after his incarceration.
The money, according to Judge Liesl Kudelka, was spent for “personal expenditures.”
She said at the Tuesday sentence hearing in Adelaide District Court, “I find that you utilised public money to conduct your company and enjoy your life.”
Redman was sentenced to five years, three months in prison on Tuesday, with a three-year non-parole term.
The first red flags were raised when the ATO discovered an error in the GST computation when auditing one of Redman’s business activity statements for the June 2016 quarter and requested documentation.
The tax office attempted to phone Redman’s wife since she was listed as the company’s director, but when he responded, he said that his wife was receiving cancer treatment in the hospital.
Redman sent a compliance officer an email claiming to have given the necessary documentation when they began looking into The Artel’s past.
He stated in the email, “My wife is not up to completing it herself since she is in severe agony right now and has no focus to do it.”
The return will help us pay for her next round of intensive therapy, so we are hope this information is adequate. I hope you remember this. I want to say again how much I appreciate your concern for us.
Redman also sent a letter that seemed to be from a doctor, but was really his forgery, requesting that his wife’s “stress levels stay low” while she was undergoing chemotherapy.
From September 2016 through November 2017, he continued to submit fictitious business activity statements.
When requested to produce papers to the ATO during a second examination of his company in August 2017, Redman lied and said his kid had been rushed to the hospital in a severe condition.
As the audit went on, Redman later said that he had cancer when he did not.
I am doing quite poorly after my first chemotherapy. He responded to the auditor in October, “I am going into the office in the morning and I’ll send it (the paperwork) through.
After being detained, Redman sent a letter of apology for his behaviour, explaining that he had been “under enormous pressure” to support his family and the community.
“Ignoring taxes is bad enough. Judge Kudelka said that it is improper to go farther and benefit oneself from taxes that are being paid by honourable and industrious members of the society.
Many members of the community who own small companies struggle to make ends meet.
To attempt to keep their firm viable and to be able to cover their own personal and family costs, “they do not resort to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the earnings.”
Redman was given a prison term by Judge Kudelka and ordered to repay the $599,122 he had stolen from the ATO.
Earlier, a number of The Artel employees said they spent weeks or months without receiving pay.
Even before the company dissolved in 2019, a Facebook page was created to demand its closure.
The Artel has officially ceased operations. Redman afterwards took a job as a cook at a mine in Western Australia, where he was paid $110,000.