The Queensland woman received concurrent one-month terms and a repayment order after pleading guilty to three fraud offences. Six years already spent in custody covered her sentence.
Maree Mavis Crabtree, 59, pleaded guilty in Brisbane District Court to three offences involving fraud and obtaining financial advantage by deception. The case involved carer payments for her daughter Tara after she entered care in August 2017, and payments from disability provider Lifestyle Solutions after Crabtree moved interstate.
ABC reported that Crabtree received about A$12,000 in government payments for a daughter who was no longer in her care. Between 2010 and 2015, she also received almost A$140,000 from the support organisation after repeatedly claiming she still lived in Muswellbrook, New South Wales.
Judge David Kent described the conduct as sustained dishonesty. Crabtree received two concurrent one-month terms for the Commonwealth offences and was ordered to repay A$12,000. She was convicted on the other fraud count without further punishment. Six years spent in pre-sentence custody covered the sentence, so she was free to leave court.
In May, a jury acquitted Crabtree of murdering and attempting to murder her son Jonathan, who died in 2017, and of related fraud. The murder charge involving her daughter Erin, who died in 2012, was withdrawn in June. The fraud pleas were separate from those murder allegations.