$3000 Fine For Sale Of Fake Gp Tickets
The Age
Tuesday September 3, 1996
A chronic gambler who sold forged Grand Prix tickets to pay his debts was yesterday given a suspended prison sentence.
John William Huckaby, 50, a fruiterer, of Chetwynd Street, North Melbourne, sold the tickets at discounted prices, telling customers he and his friends were oil-rig workers who had been called back to their jobs and could not attend the race.
Police identified 44 people who bought 106 counterfeit tickets totalling $8070 from him in March.
Yesterday in the Melbourne Magistrates Court Huckaby was given a nine-month jail sentence suspended for 12 months, and fined $3000.
The court was told Huckaby hatched the plan to print and sell the tickets with a friend because of financial trouble.
A forensic psychologist, Dr Tim Watson-Munro, told the court Huckaby had been a chronic gambler for 20 years and had a debt of $30,000.
He said he suffered from depression and anxiety mainly as a result of a breakdown in his relationship with his father who refused to speak to him for six years after he lost $50, 000 in 1990 through gambling.
Dr Watson-Munro said Huckaby had rebuilt his relationship with his father, given up gambling and was on a strict financial plan to pay his debts.
Huckaby's lawyer, Mr Brian Cash, said he had a history of gambling addiction, isolation and abandonment by his father.
``Detection was almost inevitable, and incredibly he kept offering the tickets day after day," he said.
Mr Cash argued that although Huckaby's actions were ``not very nice", the 44 people who bought the tickets and managed to see the Grand Prix might not otherwise have been able do so.
He told the court Huckaby had rebuilt his relationship with his father, and had ``come out of the shadow and into the light".
The prosecutor, Senior Constable Cathryn Hastie, told the court a printer altered serial numbers and printed 1000 fake tickets in March and Huckaby placed an advert in the Herald Sun newspaper offering each ticket for $100. The price of an equivalent genuine ticket would have been $121.75.
A few days later he changed the advertisement, reducing the price of each ticket to $70. Both adverts carried Huckaby's mobile phone number.
He was caught after an under-cover policeman bought eight forged tickets from him for $440 on 9 March, a day before the formula one race at Albert Park.
Police siezed a total of $12,410, proceeds from the sale of forged Grand Prix tickets, and 770 tickets from his car, Senior Constable Hastie said.
She said that when asked by police why he had forged and sold the tickets, Huckaby replied: ``In desparation for the money."
Huckaby pleaded guilty to 44 counts of obtaining property by deception, and another five charges including one count each of using and making a false document.
© 1996 The Age