Fraud and fraud-related offences

On 21 September 2021, the Attorney General asked us to review sentencing for fraud and fraud-related offences in New South Wales.

Report

We transmitted our Report: Fraud (PDF, 1.8 MB) to the Attorney General on 14 June 2023. It was released on 31 July 2023.

Other documents

The following documents were part of the consultation process for our Report:

• Submissions (responding to the Consultation Paper)
• Consultation Paper: Fraud (PDF, 1.5 MB)
• Preliminary submissions (responding to the terms of reference)
• Background information  

Terms of reference

We received the following terms of reference on 21 September 2021:

The Sentencing Council is asked to conduct a review of sentencing for fraud and fraud-related offences in New South Wales, especially but not limited to offences in Part 4AA of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), and make any recommendations for reform that it considers appropriate.

In undertaking this review, the Sentencing Council should:

(1) provide sentencing statistics for convictions over a five year period;

(2) provide information on the characteristics of offenders, sentence type and length; and

(3) provide background information, including:

a. the key sentencing principles and reasoning employed by sentencing judges;

b. the mitigating subjective features of offenders; and

c. any other significant factors considered in sentencing decisions that explain how courts come to their final decision on sentence (which may be done using case-studies or collation of predominate themes across cases).