JODIE Louise Schneider decided to get mad, and even, with her estranged husband from 2007 by going on a $1.4 million spending spree to show she was doing fine without him.
The only problem was it wasn't her money.
For seven years the Hunter accounts clerk made more than 500 separate fraudulent transfers from the accounts of her long-time freight distribution company employer to her personal accounts.
Her employer was only able to recover $70,000 of the $1.4 million Schneider stole once her trustee in bankruptcy distributed the proceeds from the sale of a property she owned.
By the time she was sentenced for fraud in September, 2018, Schneider could not point to a gambling addiction, mental illness, intellectual disability or "compulsive dependency" to explain why she'd stolen so much money from her employer between 2010 and 2017.
Instead she blamed a 2006 cancer diagnosis and treatment, followed by her marriage breakdown the next year.
"In order to impress her husband, and to make him believe that she was surviving very well without him, (Schneider) proceeded to steal and spend large amounts of money on herself and her children," NSW Court of Criminal Appeal Justice Richard Button found in a decision earlier this month after Schneider tried to appeal her jail sentence.
A psychological report noted she developed "maladaptive coping strategies" to give the impression she was in control, aimed at "controlling her anxiety and emotional suppression".
In the original sentencing decision in 2018 Newcastle District Court Judge Roy Ellis accepted the psychological report, but found there was no "causal link between mental health and the offending".
Judge Ellis sentenced Schneider, 53, to a maximum five years and six months jail, with a minimum sentence of three years, but she later applied to the Court of Criminal Appeal for an extension of time to appeal against a sentence she believed was manifestly excessive.
In a decision this month Justice Button and two other appeal court judges refused Schneider's application, which Justice Button found was "doomed to failure".
Schneider argued there were exceptional circumstances warranting an appeal because of recently diagnosed medical conditions involving her grandchild and son; that it was "impossible" for Judge Ellis to have had time to give due regard to the psychological report which he read over a morning tea break; and that the sentence of five years and six months was manifestly excessive.
Justice Button said it wasn't, and described her "manifestly excessive" sentence argument as "untenable".
The sentence instead "must be seen as quite lenient", Justice Button found, because of the very large amount of money dishonestly taken, the "meagre recompense" to Schneider's employer, the "hundreds of separate acts of criminality" over many years and the significant breach of trust.
He rejected her application to have further time to lodge an appeal after noting that "I would not impose any sentence less than that to which (Schneider) is currently subject".
Schneider is eligible to apply for parole on September 6, 2021.
