'Brazenly dishonest': Mother jailed over $2m 'sausage factory' TAFE scam

Rebecca Taylor, 55, director of third-party training provider TayTell, and her daughter Heather Snelleksz, 39, pleaded guilty on November, 16, 2023, to two counts each of obtaining financial advantage by deception.

Taylor was sentenced on December 4 to eight months' jail.

She will be released on a correction order that will run for four years and involve 400 hours of unpaid community work.

Her daughter was placed on a three-year order with 250 hours of unpaid work.

The pair will remain under the supervision of the Office of Corrections while their orders are in place.

The mother and daughter swindled more than $2 million from Warrnambool's South West TAFE and Bendigo Kangan Institute in 2013 and 2014.

The money was paid in exchange for training and assessing hundreds of students for a certificate four in engineering, which never occurred.

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

Judge Gerard Mullaly said the messages were shameful and revealed Taylor's "greed and clear knowledge" of a "plainly dishonest scheme".

He said the offending involved considerable planning and the offenders scammed millions of dollars while providing nothing.

Judge Gerard Mullaly said it was accepted Snelleksz played a much lesser role than that of her mother.

He said Taylor operated Taytell which provided basic office skills training to those in the workforce.

He said she had gained access to details of a large number of individuals who had received that basic training, and used their names to enrol them in the engineering course.

Taylor was "not in the least" qualified to provide any level of engineering training, Judge Mullaly said.

He said the scam was "brazenly dishonest" and the payments from public monies were considerable.

Judge Mullaly said the prosecution "fairly conceded" Taylor had suffered significant public scrutiny due to IBAC hearings into the fraudulent activity, which amounted to extra punishment.

The court heard Taylor's family home, which they deliberately built next door to her parents in order to provide them care, was forfeited and with no employment prospects she had no choice but to move to Queensland.

The judge accepted the mother and daughter's guilty pleas had a "very substantial utilitarian benefit" as it avoided a complex trial lasting six weeks.

In sentencing he said he'd considered a prosecution submission that said the court "would not err" if a jail term with a correction order was imposed.

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.