A former ACT Public Trustee employee accused of embezzling more than $1 million from vulnerable Canberrans over five years squandered tens of thousands of dollars on pokie machines.
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Timothy Stewart McLeod, 35, was a trust officer when he charged expenses for holidays and electronic devices, including televisions and laptops, to sick and elderly clients who would never use them in a string of dodgy transactions.
He also used bank cards belonging to two clients to withdraw cash from their accounts and made payments to contractors for maintenance works that never eventuated.
The ruse was discovered when McLeod went on holidays and a co-worker noticed irregularities in a client's accounts.
A wider investigation blew the lid on hundreds of suspicious transactions that involved four modes of theft and were linked to numerous clients.
McLeod managed money held in trust for dozens of clients who were ill, mentally impaired or suffered a mental illness when he committed the crimes between September 2008 and November 2013.
He was among four men police charged when they launched an investigation into an alleged fraud, later estimated at $1.65 million, at the agency after a referral in January 2014.
McLeod avoided a scheduled trial when he pleaded guilty to four counts of theft in the ACT Supreme Court on Monday.
The court heard prosecutors and McLeod's lawyers had not agreed on some aspects of his offending; those details would be the subject of a disputed facts hearing later this year.
A summary statement of facts said McLeod used fake documents on 26 occasions to request a total of $41,000 for clients to buy electronic items, from stores such as Dick Smith Electronics and JB Hi-Fi, that he then used himself.
He used the EFTPOS cards - one that belonged to a homeless man with paranoid schizophrenia and the other to an elderly man confined to a nursing home - to withdraw $104,000 he shifted into their accounts through more than 150 transactions.
McLeod nabbed another $141,500 in by falsely filling out forms requesting cash on behalf of a client for holiday expenses that would be paid into the account of a close friend and contractor.
The bulk of the money, about $800,000, was stolen through 140 fraudulent payments that went to two complicit contractors for building maintenance works that were never carried out.
Those funds would be withdrawn soon after and McLeod and the contractor would split the cash.
Police seized one of the stolen EFTPOS cards, electronic goods and documents detailing some of the suspect transactions when they searched McLeod's Pearce home in May 2014.
They also intercepted a phone call where McLeod told his mother to tell officers he lived "a modest lifestyle", to not divulge information about a family holiday, wedding or mortgage and to "not say anything silly".
Police said McLeod lost about $73,000 on pokie machines at clubs throughout the ACT in 2013 and 2014, although he later told officers: "There's no way, it's not possible for me to spend that amount of money."
He remains on bail. The case will be mentioned again next week.
Three other men charged as part of the trustee office probe remain before the courts.
Joshua Leighton, 38, was jailed for a minimum of 19 months after he admitted to more than 100 fraudulent transactions that amounted to $675,000. He has since launched an appeal against his sentence.
Stephen Evans, 33 and Donald Tawanda Savanhu, 37, will learn their fate in August.
The trustee repaid more than $1.7 million to 87 clients, including interest, and overhauled risk management strategies after being alerted to the embezzlement.
