Matthew Hanks to serve minimum 19 month prison term for Surf Life Saving NSW fraud

Former Surf Life Saving NSW General Manager Matthew Hanks has been sentenced to a minimum 19 month jail term for defrauding the organisation over an eight year period. 

Hanks, aged 52, had last year pleaded guilty in the NSW District Court to six counts of fraud, which he carried out while a senior executive at the charity which has 76,000 volunteers.

His offending included taking a cut of used car sales and outsourcing printing services - a significant expense for the organisation, given as part of its public messaging - to himself, under the business name See Hear Speak, which he failed to disclose.

Judge John Pickering said it was Surf Life Saving NSW’s “inadequate facilities” and “perhaps poor management generally” that created a situation in which Hanks had “in some respects, unchecked powers”.

Judge Pickering said Hanks did not have nefarious intentions and his approach “wasn’t out of a desire to enrich himself, initially”.

He “saw weaknesses in the way Surf Life Saving NSW was running its business” that he “genuinely” believed he could improve – certainly in relation to printing, as he had previously worked in the printing business.

However, Judge Pickering noted “it developed to a point where he saw such weaknesses that he could take advantage of them for his personal gains.”

While the Crown contended that the work of See Hear Speak “was a complete sham”, Judge Pickering did not find that made out. Rather, he said it was most likely Hanks was doing “some value added work” and it was “very difficult to assess” whether the organisation was actually losing money as a result of the fraud.

“However, what he did in deceiving Surf Life Saving NSW was still significant. He deliberately did not disclose business that he was running was his business and that he was to profit individually from the work that he was doing. This was not some mere oversight,” the judge found.

While the indictment refers to a windfall of about $400,000 from this deception, Judge Pickering said that was not proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Hanks’ further offending involved false declarations made over the sale of about 45 used cars, to the tune of more than $1.3 million.

Again, Judge Pickering accepted that Hanks believed “the ad hoc way with which Surf Life Saving NSW was selling its used motor vehicles was undesirable and not working out financially well for the organisation” and that initially he took over the management of this side of the business with good intentions.

Judge Pickering suggested that at some point Hanks’ mindset must have changed and he decided “effectively, to keep some of the money for himself”, adding “it has all the hallmarks of someone (who) realised it was a pretty easy scheme.”

Judge Pickering found that the most serious offending, was Hanks’ deception over a government grant, which, although it involved less money than the other counts, was “just brazen”.

The grant in question was for Port Macquarie to build a new clubhouse, “an important community asset for a valued organisation”.

Judge Pickering stated “the moral culpability of that particular offence is very high,” the judge said.

He imposed a custodial sentence of three years and three months, with a non-parole period of one year and seven months, to begin from today.