The son of a former tax office official has been handed a 15-year jail sentence for one of the country's biggest white-collar crimes. Adam Cranston was one of the architects of the Plutus payroll tax fraud which cost the government 105-million dollars. Despite trying to blame his co-offenders a judge today found that Cranston was an active and willing participant.
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00:00 They played various roles, but it's led all five to prison.
00:06 Adam Cranston helped devise the plan to collect gross wages through Plutus Payroll.
00:11 Millions that should have gone to the tax office were siphoned off through a web of
00:15 facade companies.
00:16 Mr Cranston was an instigator or architect of these conspiracies and one of the primary
00:20 financial beneficiaries.
00:22 Cranston received $6.8 million from the scam.
00:26 He'll serve up to 15 years behind bars with a non-parole period of 10.
00:31 The 36-year-old is the son of former ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston, who is not
00:36 accused of any involvement.
00:37 Adam Cranston sat quietly on a video link from prison as the judge found he was intimately
00:42 aware of the scam's criminal purpose.
00:45 The suggestion he thought Plutus was legitimate or profitable was dismissed by the judge as
00:49 preposterous.
00:51 Co-offender Jason Onley today received the same sentence as Cranston.
00:55 In January 2017, police were secretly listening as Adam Cranston said...
01:00 "This was fully uncovered and they knew exactly what was going on.
01:03 Here they give you a f***ing band-aid and this is a big size packet."
01:06 "The degree of how they'll blasé about it, the level of deception, it was really, really
01:15 uncomfortable to be honest."
01:16 Lawyer Dev Menon, who's serving a 14-year sentence, speculated on the recordings that
01:21 no forensic accountant in the world could unpick the finances.
01:25 "We were listening to those conversations and I just turned around to Sandra and Rosanna
01:31 and just went, 'Well, the bar's been set, off you go.'"
01:35 Authorities are still trying to claw back as much money as possible.
01:39 $50 million has been accounted for so far.
01:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]