A serial, legally blind fraudster who scammed three Tasmanians out of $235,000 with a fake “Texas oil company” share offering has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Joseph Anthony Russell, 44, had an extensive, decade-long history of defrauding people out of almost $1 million when he arrived in Tasmania from New South Wales in February 2021.
Previously known as ‘Blind Joey’, his latest con began days after he touched down in the state.
He met a woman on a dating website and lied about being a former stockbroker for Macquarie Bank who had previously lived and worked in New York.
Russell built on his lie, telling the woman’s father he had also worked at the bank and even turned down a top job in North America to stay in Hobart.
During sentencing in the Supreme Court, Acting Justice David Porter said Russell offered to invest their money in a fake Texas oil company he claimed to be involved with, telling them they would receive ten times their investments.
Less than a month after they met, the woman transferred $20,000 into a MyStateBank account believing the shares would be purchased on her behalf.
“[She] was told the account was called “Russell Capital Pty Ltd”. However, that account was in fact a personal savings account, opened by the defendant … It had $10.51 in it before the $20,000 transfer,” Justice Porter said.
A further $40,000 was put into the account by the woman over the next few weeks, while her father transferred $25,000.
A third person then invested a total of $125,000 into the scam on the promise the share offer could be worth between $2.5 and $3 billion and that the funds were insured.
Justice Porter said Russell used the money for lavish spending, including payments on a vehicle for the woman, trips to the mainland, top restaurants, exclusive hotels, expensive clothing, gambling and a corporate suite at an AFL match in Melbourne.
But the Texas oil company scam came to an end when the victims were shown an episode of ‘A Current Affair’, which revealed Russell had used fake names in the past to defraud multiple people of significant amounts of money and had gone to jail.
Police were alerted soon after and fraud reports were made at the bank, before Russell was located and arrested in New South Wales several months later.
“The defendant employed grandiose promises of great wealth. He betrayed the trust of these people, one of whom he had become particularly close to,” Justice Porter said.
Russell was sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment, backdated to August 18, 2022, with a non-parole period of 25 months.
He was also ordered to pay the woman back her $75,000, the woman’s father $50,000 and the third man $40,471.41.
