A woman has admitted knowingly making false statements as part of dodgy applications submitted by her former army major son, who defrauded the Department of Defence of nearly $100,000.
Ilze Stephens, 70, faced the ACT Supreme Court via audio-visual link from her home state of Victoria on Wednesday, when she pleaded guilty to four counts of making false or misleading statements.
Her offending began in August 2011 and continued until April 2018.
It involved her making four false statements about her son, Travis David Morgan Stephens, in connection with rental allowance applications the latter submitted to the Department of Defence.
Ilze Stephens said she was the owner of a unit in Kingston and that her son, a tenant of the property, was paying her weekly rent to live there.
In actual fact, the pair had jointly purchased the unit and Travis Stephens was therefore not entitled to rental allowance payments from the Department of Defence.
By the time the pair's deception was discovered, the son had fraudulently received $91,705.54 in rental allowance payments.
Travis Stephens, who has since paid the money back, pleaded guilty last November to charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception and dishonestly causing a loss to the Department of Defence.
The latter charge related to him fraudulently claiming a relocation assistance payment of $4406.45 by falsely representing that he had been evicted from the place he lived in prior to the Kingston unit.
Justice David Mossop is due to sentence Travis Stephens on December 1, after proceedings were delayed in May to allow the former army major to undergo medical examinations in the wake of a psychological report that made his lawyers aware of "the possibility of a traumatic brain injury".
Prosecutor Marcus Hassall and Ilze Stephens' lawyer, Michael Kukulies-Smith, told Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson on Wednesday that Justice Mossop should also now sentence the fraudster's mother.
Ilze Stephens' case is now set to go before the court's registrar on Thursday morning, when a date for her sentencing is likely to be set.
