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Comment by pktgen | Hacker News Reader

> He did nothing to defraud the bank or mislead it. He simply had access to a large line of credit, and used it. If the bank wants it's money back, that's a civil matter, not a criminal one. It's their responsibility to ask for it back.

He was drawing on this line of credit, which he knew he was legally obligated to pay back, without ever intending to pay it back. That sure seems like fraud to me.

There is a difference between taking out a loan with the intention of paying it back, but not being able to pay it back due to some circumstance (you lost your job, had a medical emergency, business failed, or something like that), and taking out a loan without ever intending to pay it back. One is a civil breach of contract; the other (at least in the US) is criminal fraud.

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> without ever intending to pay it back

How can you know that? He himself writes that he was waiting for the bank to ask for some money back and intended to deal with it when it comes.

Lack of detailed planning for something isn't the same as lack of intention to do something when it happens.

Lots of people take loans without precisely knowing where they'll find money to pay them back.

> Lots of people take loans without precisely knowing where they'll find money to pay them back.

Hell, i'd say in almost all cases that is true. How am i going to know if i'll be at my current job long enough to pay back that car loan? Hypothetically i will have a job, and will pay it back, but in reality i have no idea how i'll pay it back.

At best, i can accurately predict X months of payments. After that, it's all just educated guesses.

That's easy, he had no money to pay it back, ergo it's fair to conclude he had no intention of paying it back.

It's one thing to go a couple of thousand overdrawn, quite another to spend $2 million when you have no source of income.

That's my thinking as well. He would have known that there wasn't a chance in hell he could ever pay that back, nor could he reasonably have believed this situation might change in the future. I would expect this, combined with the amount, extravagance, and opportunistic nature of this whole thing, to show intent to defraud. (But I don't know much about Australia's legal system.)

> he had no money to pay it back, ergo it's fair to conclude he had no intention of paying

i don't think that would stand in any court. the former doesn't imply the latter by necessity.

Whilst IANAL, it would seem logical that a court would look at whether the defendant could reasonably have expected to be able to pay back a loan.

If I have a say $50k/year job and borrow say $200k I could reasonably have expected to pay it back, if I then lose my job I could say I had intended to do so but circumstances changed.

if I have $0/year as a job and borrow $2 million, you're not seriously suggesting that any reasonable person would buy "oh I totally was going to pay it back" are you?

What if I play it on blackjack? It may be incredibly poor judgement on my part, by what if I totally intended to win & pay it back, with interest?

My point is that if I didn't actually do anything to deceive you into giving me money (like, I didn't claim that I have a millionaire father who's going to give you the money in case I lose at blackjack) - then it's not really deception on my part; it's just error and/or poor judgement on your part for handing me the money.

"Have no money to pay it back" applies to many companies (including many banks) that borrowed money and to many house owners, too. Would you conclude they have no intention of paying it back, too?

Many companies also spend money they lent on frivolous stuff (end of year parties, football tables, etc) that doesn't obviously contribute to the bottom line, so buying some booze and spending some money on strippers, in itself, isn't fraud.

Back to this case: I can see how this would be "obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime", just as taking money from someone's open purse would be.

> "Have no money to pay it back" applies to many companies (including many banks) that borrowed money and to many house owners, too. Would you conclude they have no intention of paying it back, too?

The question isn't whether the loan was paid back, it's whether there was an intent to pay it back at the time the loan was taken out. Many of those homeowners foolishly believed their house would appreciate at 20% per year indefinitely (and many lenders were telling people this to convince them to take out loans).

Maybe he foolishly believed that his life will be worth enough to pay back what he borrowed on some reasonable payment plan.

well in the UK when you want to take out a loan, the bank is legally obliged to look at your ability to repay and not loan you the money if you don't appear to have the ability to repay. Home owners have collatoral, business have business plans, those are assessed by banks for ability to repay.

If this guy had actually said to the bank "hey I want to borrow $2 million, I have no income and no collatoral" do you think they would have accepted the loan?

But he effectively asked, can I borrow for my next mortgage payment and the bank said "sure". And then he asked for more money and more. He didn't take 2 million $ loan. Just many smaller ones. Which all have been approved by the bank. Just not by any human at the bank.

And you don't think that's a sophistry? Let's be honest he knew full well the bank, if actually asked, would not have approved his borrowing, any reasonable person would.

He took advantage of a mistake made by an automated system from the bank, there was no human going "gee the guy with no income wants another $1000 to add to his massive overdraft, sure why not".

I can understand that many people don't give that much thought to money, banks, how they work, what they do and what they don't do. People go to bank to get a house. Then just make transfers for the amounts that bank tells them.

I can see how a guy could just overdraw his account and wait for the bank to tell him to pay some of it back. Maybe he thougt that when the bank will request some money back he can always sell cars or celebriy memorabilia and make the ends meet.

He didn't cocieve a plan to buy a helicopter or luxury yaht. He was just living little bit above his means for a while.

Fraud is a bit strong name when you are just doing someting noone forbid you to do.

Sorry but that's not what I read in that article, to quote

"I went to strip clubs and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on girls, alcohol, cocaine and whatever else."

that's not the actions of someone who just overdrew his account a bit, or is a bit bad with money.

If you have money available and feel down that's imaginable thing to do. Even if that money doesn't come from savings. For me that doesn't look like a obvious part of some fraudulent masterplan concieved months earlier.

Are you kidding? What job skills did this guy have that would let him pay back $50,000 he was wasting on expensive cars? And then over a million on that, strippers, and cocaine? The guy had no plan, no responsibility in amount borrowed, wasn't seeking jobs, and ran it up to around what many make in a lifetime.

It's definitely fraud by any reasonable definition. Fortunately for him, the definition was unreasonably good to him. However, I'd understand the court giving him a lower sentence on grounds of him appearing (to me at least) to have a mental breakdown of sorts after his accident plus the bank showing incredible negligence in their lending practices. The bank just handing him that much money was so stupid they should probably be fined for it on top of his punishment. If it was straight-up their money, then making sure they loose it for good might be good punishment.

Sure, maybe he was planning to win the lottery when the payment came due.

The question to me is, do you think he took and spent the money with the expectation that he would be able to pay it back? Seems pretty obvious the answer is no.

Not saying he should be locked up, but let's be reasonable here.

He had a business, which he must have opened with money that was borrowed from that bank. Maybe he expected his business would take off and give him more money than what he owed.

The charge he faced wasn't fraud, but that of "dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception", which has a number of different facets to fraud. I think his "Oh, I just kept asking for more" thing doesn't really pass the smell test.

It doesn't sound like deception was involved if all he had to do was keep asking for more money, nor dishonesty if they never questioned him when he asked for it.

Neither country has debtor's prisons anymore. That dark chapter in our history has past, fortunately.

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