A Commonwealth public servant's habit of forging doctors' certificates to take days off work was only discovered by his bosses after he went too far and faked having lung cancer.
The ACT Magistrates Court heard yesterday that the Department of Education and Workplace Relations became suspicious of its employee Ben Lyons in September 2006 when a concerned colleague tried to visit the 26-year-old's bedside, only to find that no hospital in Canberra had heard of the man.
The court ordered Lyons to refund more than $3000 in sickness benefits he was paid by the department and he was convicted of three counts of falsely obtaining financial advantage by supplying forged doctors' certificates.
Magistrate Maria Doogan told Lyons that his workplace scam showed a ''high level of criminality''. She ordered him to serve a two-year good-behaviour bond and fined him $900 on top of the wages he must repay.
She said the criminal convictions should serve as a warning to other workers thinking of trying to hoodwink their bosses with fake documents.
The fake doctors' notes were supplied to the department by Lyons between June and September 2006, to cover three bouts of ''illness'', each lasting about one week.
Lyons' bosses became suspicious when his director, Cath Winter, concerned for her colleague's welfare, went to visit him in Canberra Hospital in September after being told that Lyons was having surgery for lung cancer, a claim supported by a fake letter from the head of the hospital's oncology unit.
When Ms Winter could not find her colleague at Canberra Hospital, she thought she might be at the wrong place and tried Calvary, Calvary John James and the National Capital Private hospitals but was told none of them had any record of Lyons as a patient.
The three medical certificates produced by Lyons were found to be forgeries, ''signed'' by doctors at the Lanyon Medical Practice, a clinic that Lyons had never attended.
Magistrate Maria Doogan said yesterday that she was disturbed by the high quality of the forgeries.
''It's a bit disturbing because they look legitimate, they look like real certificates,'' Ms Doogan said.
Lyons told the court through his lawyer Michael Toole that he regretted the episode and that after he was sacked by the department for the fraud, his partner and two children had left him because they ''didn't want to be associated with him any more''.
Mr Toole said the offending by Lyons, now 28, was born of desperation to avoid contact with his supervisor at the department with whom he had a poor relationship and this had ''caused some issues and some stress''.
But Ms Doogan said there was a need to protect employers from similar fraud taking place.