A FORMER local football coach who used his position of authority and trust to defraud teammates and business partners of more than $700,000, to fuel a pathological gambling disorder, was sentenced to two years and six months’ jail in the Melbourne County Court on Thursday, June 20.
He will serve a minimum of one year and four months, allowing time for mental health treatment on supervised release.
There was also an order that he pay compensation of $545,633.
he court heard that Dean Pipicelli, 56, formerly of Corinella, was an assistant coach at the Stony Creek Football Netball Club, and then senior coach at Kilcunda-Bass, in 2019 and 2020, when he persuaded teammates to invest in a Ponzi-style scheme involving the purchase and sale of timber supplies.
He also defrauded his business partner in a timber supply company they co-founded, “violating her trust”, and stealing a total of $333,633 from her and her husband, “significantly eroding their lifesavings” and leaving them feeling hurt and psychologically impacted by the incident.
While considering the mitigating factors, including pleas of guilty, no prior offending, demonstrated prospects for rehabilitation, mental health issues and stress associated with having a prison sentence hanging over his head for four years, Judge Richard Maidment said the evidence did not identify a sufficient nexus between his mental impairments and the “persistent and calculated duplicity” of the crimes.
He said the start of the gambling problems post-dated the beginning of the offending and noted that there was no realistic prospect of Pipicelli reimbursing his victims any time in the foreseeable future.
“Your offending conduct, extending as it did for more than 12 months, and involving victims from your own community, who respected and trusted you with their money, was a sustained and despicable breach of the trust reposed in you by those victims, by your community and by your own family. You let them all down,” said Judge Maidment.
He said Pipicelli had ample opportunity to stop offending and seek help but continued to the point that his dishonesty was inevitably discovered.
“I accept that your offending was relatively unsophisticated, and was inevitably going to be discovered, but you had ample opportunity to reflect on the nature and extent of your criminal conduct while offending. But you persisted in the face of full understanding of what you were doing and from whom you were obtaining your ill-gotten gains.”
Having been shunned by his father, his siblings, his former wife, children and community, the court heard that Pipicelli had made a number of attempts on his own life, with his only saving grace being a South Gippsland business operator who gave Pipicelli a place to live and work while he waited for the case to go to court.
Judge Maidment summarised Pipicelli’s offending as follows:
* Charge 1: In January 2019, Pipicelli dishonestly obtained $7400 from his business partner supposed to pay for the part-purchase of a new forklift.
* Charge 2: Between April 2019 and January 2020, he dishonestly obtained $123,400 from a former Stony Creek Football Club teammate, paid back $91,000 but retained $32,000 while also not paying a promised share of the profits from the proposed sale of timber packs.
* Charge 3: April 2019, Pipicelli dishonestly obtained $93,081 from his business partner, resulting from a fraudulent scheme to supply $220,000 worth of timber to a San Remo builder.
* Charge 4: Between July and August 2019, he stole $35,000 from a sporting friend of 16 years, accepting $50,000 from him to buy timber packs for sale, and repaying only $15,000.
* Charge 5: In November 2019, stole $150,000 from his business partner supposed to go towards the purchase of a block of land at Coronet Bay.
* Charge 6: In December 2019, retained $110,152 from another fraudulent transaction with his business partner to buy the block next door.
* Charge 7: Between February and March 2020, he received $28,000 from a player he recruited to Kilcunda-Bass with the promise of profits from a timber sales venture, repaid $19,000 but retained $9000.
* Charge 8: In March 2020, received $24,000 from a football mate he’d known for four years, supposedly to finance a further timber purchase and sale business opportunity, but pocketed the whole amount himself.
* Charge 9: Between March and April 2020, received a total of $142,000 from another football mate, again to finance a commercial business venture but dishonestly retain the total amount.
If not for a guilty plea, Judge Maidment said he would have sentenced Pipicelli to imprisonment for three years, six months, with a non-parole period of two years, two months.
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