Four years for swindling 'genius' with 200 identities

Garry Fullerton. Picture / Martin Sykes

An Australian conman with more than 200 identities and convictions for a $5 million property fraud has been jailed for swindling banks in New Zealand.

Garry Fullerton, 49, was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison by a judge who said he could turn his life around if he put the "genius" used in his offending to legitimate use.

Fullerton came to New Zealand four years ago and assumed a series of identities to obtain more than $550,000 in mortgages and tens of thousands of dollars from credit cards and the Inland Revenue Department in GST returns. He was convicted and sentenced in the Waitakere District Court under the alias Frederick Matthew Nixon, but also used the names Matthew Michael Walsh, Garry Jon McLeish and Allan Martin Holmes to carry out his crimes.

His lawyer compared him with the conman played by Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can.

He admitted 17 charges, including two counts of obtaining by deception, making a false statement to obtain a New Zealand passport, altering documents and intentional damage.

Fullerton obtained a passport after filling out the declaration section himself, using one of his other identities.

Judge Philip Recordon ordered him to repay $245,781 to his victims, although police say there is no money to give back.

Fullerton was arrested in Melbourne in November 1998 for a sophisticated fraud that earned him and three co-offenders $3 million in a year.

The gang had finance applications in train that would have earned them a further $2 million, Victoria police said.

Fullerton fled to New Zealand while on bail awaiting trial on more than 100 charges but was found three months later living in Orewa and extradited. He admitted the charges on his return to Victoria and was sentenced to five years in prison, with a three-year non-parole period, and ordered to pay reparations of $373,000.

Victoria police have more than 200 known names for Fullerton.

They think he breached parole and travelled to New Zealand on a false passport in October 2002.

Auckland police believe Fullerton assumed false identities as soon as he arrived in New Zealand and are aware that he was collecting benefits before his first known fraud in 2004.

Detective Constable John Woolford of Waitakere tracked down Fullerton last December to a central Auckland apartment where $20,000 worth of gold and silver bars were being used to hold open his bedroom door. Fullerton has refused to speak to police, but associates told Mr Woolford he would drink $500 to $700 bottles of wine for breakfast.

Fullerton admitted he had falsely obtained a New Zealand passport, forged payslips, altered bank statements and used a driver's licence issued in Vanuatu to commit crimes.

In May 2004, Fullerton used the name Matthew Walsh to obtain a $228,000 mortgage from Westpac bank and bought a property in Luckens Rd, West Harbour. He obtained a second mortgage worth $342,000 from the ANZ Bank under the name Nixon to "buy" the Luckens Rd property from "Walsh" at an inflated price, using a sales-and-purchase agreement taken from a real estate agent before it was completed.

He used the money to pay the Westpac mortgage and penalties of $245,511, with the remaining $78,610 going to "Walsh" after an estate agent's commission.

Fullerton received $42,354 from Inland Revenue after making a false GST claim as "Nixon" on the purchase of Luckens Rd from "Walsh". He gained a further $26,800 by registering for GST as "Walsh" and claiming back GST on the sale to "Nixon".

Fullerton made two payments on the Luckens Rd mortgage before the bank sold the property in a mortgagee sale, at a loss of $127,000, police said.

He later bought a $45,000 house in Taumarunui and again used a partially completed registered sale-and-purchase agreement to try, unsuccessfully, to obtain a mortgage on an inflated value of $160,000.

He got three credit cards which he used to obtain $38,179, mainly in cash withdrawals.

Defence lawyer David Young said Fullerton was a hopeless alcoholic. Referring to the conman in Catch Me If You Can, played by actor Leonardo Di Caprio, Mr Young said while his client "may not be Leonardo DiCaprio, the multiple personalities he adopted were to support drugs and alcohol".