In April 2023, our client was charged with multiple fraud and proceeds of crime charges.  In short, the police alleged that he was the mastermind of a criminal syndicate that defrauded more than $1 million and then laundered that money using cryptocurrency and international money remittance services.

After reviewing the evidence, our criminal lawyers engaged in extensive charge negotiations with the prosecution, resulting in some of the charges being withdrawn and others restructured favourably for our client.  Importantly, the agreement allowed Mr Cheema to be sentenced in the Local Court and not the District Court.

We appeared at our client’s sentence, where there was a robust contest between the prosecution and defence regarding the role of our client in relation to the offending. Specifically, the prosecution sought to argue that the Magistrate should find that our client was behind the index fraud offences whereas we argued that the Court could not take that into account because to do so would offend the De Simoni principle.

Ultimately, the Magistrate agreed with our submissions and disregarded the police allegations that our client was involved in the fraud offences from which the more than $1 million the subject of the proceeds of crime was derived.

Our client was sentenced to a prison sentence of 15 months, which was significantly less than what the prosecution had sought.

For more information about the case, see: Money man caught after syndicate flew ‘mules’ into Sydney to build $1m fraud web, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2024.