Restaurant owner cops five years jail for fraud
Brad Redman, a McLaren Vale restaurant owner, has been jailed for $800,000 in GST revenue fraud.
Redman will serve five years in jail, with a parole term of three years after fraudulently obtaining $613,262 in GST refunds and attempting to secure another $210,000.
The Australian tax Office will make Redman pay back the money on top of his jail term.
Redman ran a restaurant and gift shop in McLaren Vale.
He is said to have made false claims to the ATO including overstating his total sales and GST-free sales.
The fraud was compounded by a fake document delivered to the ATO claiming his wife was sick with cancer.
The doctor implicated in the fraud, denied she ever wrote the letter.
“When you claim a refund that you’re not entitled to, you’re stealing from the community and disadvantaging everyone who does the right thing,” Tax office assistant commissioner Jade Hawkins said.
Redman was sentenced by District Court Judge Liesl Kudelka who said, “I do not think you grasp the intensity of feeling from hardworking people in the community who have honestly paid their tax who find out that someone such as you has helped themselves to the revenue and spent almost $600,000.”
Irit Jackson, 5th September 2022
