Mother in custody after admitting $2m 'sausage factory' TAFE scam

The messages from September 2013 were aired a decade later in Melbourne County Court.

Rebecca Taylor, director of third-party training provider TayTell, and her daughter Heather Snelleksz, pleaded guilty on November, 16, 2023, to two counts each of obtaining financial advantage by deception.

In texts to her daughter Taylor said she was scared something was going to go wrong, that it was too good to be true and they would be audited and forced to pay "it all back".

Despite her fears, Taylor and Snelleksz went on to falsely claim more than $2 million.

The money was paid by Warrnambool's South West TAFE and Bendigo Kangan TAFE in exchange for training and assessing hundreds of students for a certificate four in engineering.

Enrolment forms and assessment workbooks were falsified in a process Taylor described in text messages at the time as a "sausage factory".

On Thursday the court heard South West TAFE signed a third-party agreement with TayTell in 2013 to train employees of private company Zinfra.

The employees had no idea they were enrolled in the course, which required 1360 hours, and their details were collected when TayTell conducted a few hours of unrelated training.

Taytell went on to receive $1.8 million from Warrnambool's TAFE.

The company then reached a similar agreement with Kangan in 2014, enrolling Jetstar employees in the engineering course that did not take place.

The enrolments included false information and forged signatures.

The rort started to unravel in late 2014 when Kangan sent students statements of attainment for study they hadn't completed, and had never enrolled in.

Concerns were then raised about possible fraud.

Taylor said in text messages to her daughter there was a serious problem with the "training stuff", that she'd been crying and "legal people" were involved.

Later that year she sent Kangan an invoice for more than $200,000, which was paid.

The mother and daughter were charged by the corruption watchdog in September 2020, three years after a public IBAC hearing took place.

They were then expected to face trial in the same court in mid-October 2023 but entered guilty pleas in September.

Snelleksz accepted a proposed sentence of up to a three-year community order.

Barrister Diana Price, representing Taylor, said her client did not seek a sentence indication at the time but pleaded guilty in circumstances where she had comfort knowing her daughter would not be jailed.

The prosecution has submitted Taylor should be sentenced to jail with a non-parole period.

In a letter she wrote to the court she said since pleading guilty she'd reflected on the past decade and accepted responsibility for her "reckless" and "selfish" actions.

She said she had "clearly failed" and was sorry.

Judge Gerard Mullaly questioned how much weight he could give to the letter.

Taylor's barrister said public humiliation and a loss of personal property had been a "huge sting" to her client.

She said forfeiture proceedings saw Taylor lose her "precious family home" in Newlyn, in Hepburn Shire, as well as cars and superannuation funds.

"The house is what cut the deepest, not just for (Taylor) but for everyone else in that family," Ms Price said.

Ffyona Livingstone-Clark, representing Snelleksz, said at the time of the offending her client was suffering psychosis from a drug addiction she had hid from her family.

The pair will be sentenced on December 4, 2023.

Taylor's bail was revoked and she was taken into custody.

In September former South West TAFE executive Maurice Molan, of Koroit, pleaded guilty to a single charge of misconduct in public office.

A judge at the time said Molan was not complicit in the fraud but falsely recorded Taylor was qualified to conduct the engineering course. He was fined $2500 without conviction.