Melissa Jade Higgins: Childcare rorter loses appeal on $3.6m scam
Childcare rorter Melissa Jade Higgins lost her appeal against conviction for a “brazen” $3.6m government benefits scam after failing to argue that jurors who called her “a bogan” were racist.
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal rejected her bid today to overturn her conviction on 81 counts of falsely claiming Commonwealth benefits intended for vulnerable children and using forged documents.
Higgins amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune via Aussie Giggles, her family daycare centre in the NSW border town of Albury.
She was jailed for a maximum of seven years for claiming “grossly inflated and unreal fees” as high as $9000 a week per child and installed a pool, bought a $90,000 car and a house with the funds.
At an appeal hearing last month, her counsel argued jurors had joked she was “a bogan” while deciding her fate, and were coerced into their verdicts.
David Dalton SC, for Higgins, told the court a NSW Sheriffs’ investigation had asserted one juror said Higgins was “100 per cent guilty” and the court should “lock her up and throw away the key”.
It was also claimed that after a 40-day trial some jurors wanted to rush the verdict so they could go on pre-booked holidays.
But a judgment by His Honours Justice Peter Hamill, Justice Mark Leeming and Justice Ian Harrison, found “the word ‘bogan’ is not a racist description”.
“It is evident from a review of the jury interviews that no specific racist remark is nominated by any juror,” the judgment said.
Higgins was found guilty by the jury in 2016 of the 81 offences which included 66 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, 14 counts of using a forged document and one count of dealing with the proceeds of crime in excess of $1 million.
She was sentenced to a minimum four year prison term, which is due to expire in 2021.
Higgins, then aged 29, filed a notice of intention to appeal and sought bail immediately after her sentence was delivered.
At her 2017 sentencing hearing, Judge Donna Woodburne said Higgins was motivated by greed and deliberately and repeatedly abused a government scheme designed to help vulnerable children.
Judge Woodburne said Higgins had committed a “great injustice” against all genuine welfare recipients to enrich herself.
“She conceived of, and actively implemented, what was a planned and premeditated fraudulent scheme,” Judge Woodburne said.
She said the fee of up to $9000 per child claimed by Higgins “was not a real fee. It was a ridiculous and exorbitant fee claimed precisely because, and only because, the Government was footing the bill”.
Higgins transferred the bulk of the funds from the company into five personal bank accounts after making claims online between September 2013 and March 2015.
The claims were made under the Special Child Care Benefit scheme from the federal Department of Education and Department of Human Services.
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