Former restaurateur and banker receives suspended sentence for fraud

A respected Brisbane banker at a Logan bank has been convicted of seven financial crimes, after trying to forge a $23,000 cheque to pay off a personal debt.

51-year-old Andrew Stanley Bauer, was charged with seven offences after his failed fraud scheme in March last year.

These offences include three counts each of forgery and making a false entry in a record, and one count of uttering a forged document.

Beenleigh Magistrates Court heard that the married father of three had opened Toowoomba restaurant Platform 9 in 2010, but was forced to liquidate in 2013. Following this he relocated his family to Brisbane in 2014. In May 2017 he secured a position at Suncorp. 

In August that year, Mr Bauer was declared bankrupt and in an effort to stop his house from being repossessed, he borrowed $22,000 from a family friend on 24 October.

By early 2019 Bauer still hadn’t repaid his friend and he wasn’t able to quickly access his superannuation, leaving him in a desperate situation. This led him to start his fraudulent behaviour. 

The court heard Bauer attempted to print off a cheque by entering false information into an internal Suncorp system. The intention was to only print one cheque but due to some mistakes he was only successful after his third attempt. This is what led to the three counts of forgery making a false entry in a record.

Bauer was caught after his family friend tried to cash the cheque at another bank and was rejected.

Bauer’s defence lawyer Lucy Ferguson told the court that the cheques weren’t intended to be cashed and that Bauer only gave them to the friend to hold onto as evidence that Bauer would be able to repay him the full amount.

Ms Ferguson told the court Mr Bauer had been making monthly repayments to his friend and  only had $8000 left to pay.

Mr Bauer’s bankruptcy ends in the coming months.

He received a 12-month suspended sentence with an operational period of two years as he had no criminal history before this offence.