A woman who made up a baby girl and faked her birth to claim welfare payments for eight years has been jailed.
Athena Murray, 63, was paid $51,760.46 through Family Tax Benefit and the ‘Baby Bonus’ for a child she called Hayley Maree Murray.
Justice Kate Cuthbertson, sentencing her on Friday, found the child “never existed”.
Murray pleaded guilty to obtaining a financial advantage by deception and giving misleading information to Medicare.
The court heard Murray told Centrelink in March 2009 she was due to give birth within two weeks.
She then registered the birth of a full-term girl, saying the baby was born at her Sheffield home on March 26, 2009.
Her eldest daughter, Cassandra Elliott, signed a statutory declaration saying she helped with the birth.
The made-up child had the same first and middle names and birthday as a daughter of Murray’s then-partner, Colin Morris.
The judge found Murray did this so she could remember the details if anyone asked.
Murray later added the child to her Medicare card. She also handed in a form objecting to the child being vaccinated, which boosted her payments.
She listed the child as living with her on her daughter Tahlia’s Youth Allowance forms and on her own Newstart claim.
She also pleaded guilty to twice falsely telling Centrelink she had no stake in a family trust.
The scam came to light after a tip-off from the public. Investigators found no Medicare or health insurance claims for the child and no ferry or passport records.
A week after the AFP searched her vehicles in October 2017, Murray rang Centrelink and said the child was a stillborn “dead baby”.
“In my mind I was just trying to keep her alive,” she told Centrelink.
She then sent the births registry a form saying she lost the baby 23 weeks into the pregnancy, which the court heard did not match the full-term birth she had registered.
Elliott told the court her mother admitted making up a “fake child”.
Murray claimed her late partner forced her into it. The judge rejected that, finding Murray acted on her own and was heavily involved in the family’s finances.
“You presented as fundamentally dishonest,” Justice Cuthbertson said.
She called the fraud “prolonged, brazen and sophisticated” and said the evidence suggested it “was based on greed rather than need”.
Justice Cuthbertson found Murray showed no genuine remorse and said involving her daughter made the offending worse.
Murray dodged a court summons and had to be arrested in Queensland and extradited to Tasmania in 2023.
Murray was jailed for two years and four months, with release after 12 months on a three-year good behaviour bond. She was also ordered to repay $33,342.30.
