A disgraced Victorian police officer who used her job to find empty homes to grow a fraudulent investment empire has successfully appealed the length of her sentence.
Rosa Catherine Rossi, 59, changed the locks on six vacant homes between April 2016 and June 2017, and began renting some out in the hope of gaining adverse possession.
Victorian law allows people to take ownership of properties if they can prove they've exclusively possessed it for at least 15 years.
Three of the homes Rossi targeted were in Willaura, in western Victoria, which has a population of just over 500 people.
The others were in the Melbourne suburbs of Malvern, Chadstone and Brooklyn.
Rossi was in September 2020 sentenced to four years and six months in prison, with a non-parole period of two years and four months.
But on Wednesday before Victoria's Court of Appeal she was re-sentenced to three years and six months behind bars.
This came after greater weight was given to the effect of Rossi's guilty plea, which saved the court from a three-week trial amid a chronic backlog during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It is no exaggeration to say that backlogs in criminal lists are enormous, and will take years to clear," Justice Geoffrey Priest and Justice Terence Forrest said in their written judgment.
"We have concluded that the sentence imposed is manifestly excessive."
The judges added nobody suffered financial loss as a result of Rossi's swindles but said they had not "lost sight of the seriousness" of her offending.
"We consider the applicant's offending to have been cynical and flagrantly dishonest, perpetrated by a person whose sworn duty it was to uphold the law," the judges said.
"Her actions were calculated to erode the community's trust in its police."
Rossi used Victoria Police's internal database to access information about vacant properties and went to one Melbourne suburban council office in uniform to demand a home owner's phone number.
She told a concerned neighbour in Willaura she was a police officer, had keys to the home and was buying it.
She resigned from her job and pleaded guilty to charges of obtaining property by deception, unauthorised access to police information and perjury.
In a pre-sentence hearing her lawyer described Rossi's attempt to build a property portfolio as misguided.
Rossi in May 2020 pleaded guilty to five counts of obtaining property by deception, one count of attempting to obtain property by deception, one count of unauthorised accessing of police material, and two counts of perjury.
She must now serve one year and nine months before being eligible for parole.
