A Mildura man who amassed more than $100,000 in tollway, parking and failure-to-vote fines has been given 28 years to repay his debts.<\/p>\n
Anthony Keith Heap, 35, fronted the Mildura Magistrates Court on Thursday after failing to pay $107,159.70 in fines.<\/p>\n
The court heard Heap accrued the fines while living in Frankston and Sandringham between 2014 and 2020.<\/p>\n
A remorseful Heap told the court the fines accumulated during a difficult personal period, and that he had presumed the company he worked for was covering the costs.<\/p>\n
The court heard Heap would routinely travel on both the CityLink and EastLink for work in a car registered to his name.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Patrick Southey said Heap’s letterbox “must have been bursting” with invoices.<\/p>\n
“You got away with it for a long time, now it’s coming home to roost,” he said.<\/p>\n
Heap responded that he “may have got some” invoices, but some of the offending was 10 years ago, and he could not recall.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anthony Keith Heap will have to pay back $73,000. (Facebook: Narre South Saints Football Netball Club)<\/p>\n
Six years of ignoring fines<\/p>\n
Heap’s lawyer, Sasha Leon Molina, told the court her client was in an abusive and controlling relationship at the time and using drugs.<\/p>\n
The court heard Heap had also injured his back playing football and was living transiently.<\/p>\n
Heap told the court he took full responsibility for the fines, which he said he incurred at a time when he did not care about anyone, or himself.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Southey acknowledged that Heap had lived a difficult life, which he had now brought back on track.<\/p>\n
“He’s buried his head in the sand for a long time,” Magistrate Southey said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Heap routinely used tollways across Melbourne without paying. (Supplied: Transurban)<\/p>\n
The court reduced the amount Heap owed to $73,000 due to his financial circumstances.<\/p>\n
It was agreed Heap would commence repaying the full amount at $50 a week.<\/p>\n
At that rate, it would take 28 years to pay the debt in full, with Heap’s payment plan expiring in 2053.<\/p>\n
He was warned that if he failed to repay the debt on schedule, he could be imprisoned for up to 360 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Mildura man who amassed more than $100,000 in tollway, parking and failure-to-vote fines has been given 28…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[170660,170659,170656,13735,43,48066,44,170658,170657,170655,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-298229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-28-years","tag-anthony-keith-heap","tag-city-link","tag-fines","tag-headlines","tag-mildura","tag-news","tag-patrick-southey","tag-peninsula-link","tag-tollway","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}