A former Melbourne lawyer caught stealing from a grieving widow who was his client has been sentenced to more than four years in prison and will never again practise as a solicitor.<\/p>\n
Dean Hadjina was found to have stolen $482,154 from the widow, who spoke little English, as she sought compensation payouts after her husband’s workplace death in 2018.<\/p>\n
Hadjina, who pleaded guilty to theft and gaining financial advantage by deception in August, pocketed $144,060 from the widow’s initial insurance payout of $644,095.<\/p>\n
Over the next two years, he persuaded her to pay $338,093 in supposed “legal fees”, claiming he was working towards securing more compensation.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Hadjina created false Supreme Court documents that said the woman would be awarded $17.25 million.<\/p>\n
When the money did not come, the victim and her interpreter confronted Hadjina after contacting the courts and an insurance company that was making weekly pension payments.<\/p>\n
“I can’t do more than promise and as a good Christian and lawyer, I do not lie ever,” he wrote in a message.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court heard Hadjina took advantage of the vulnerable widow as she sought compensation payouts after her husband’s death. (ABC News: Karen Percy)<\/p>\n
After an investigation, the Victorian Legal Services Board found Hadjina only completed $583 worth of genuine legal work for the victim.<\/p>\n
In sentencing Hadjina, Supreme Court Justice Rita Incerti on Friday said his conduct struck “at the heart of public trust in the legal profession and the justice system”.<\/p>\n
“It is essential that your sentence reflects not only the gravity of your offending, but that it sends a clear and unequivocal message to other legal practitioners, and the broader community, that such breaches of trust will attract serious consequences,” she said.<\/p>\n
Justice Incerti noted some mitigating circumstances for Hadjina, including a report from a forensic psychiatrist that diagnosed him with major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, opioid use disorder and gambling disorder.<\/p>\n
“I am prepared to accept that your mental impairment reduces your moral culpability for the offending,” Justice Incerti said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I repeat, however, that the extent to which it does so must be limited.”<\/p>\n
Justice Incerti also ordered Hadjina no longer be able to practice law \u2014 a punishment she said affected his sentence.<\/p>\n
“I consider that the loss of your career, the salutary effect of your incarceration, and the significant impact on your family, means there is no realistic prospect of you reoffending,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The loss of your career is a matter I must take into account as a kind of ancillary punishment.<\/p>\n
“However, it is your misconduct in that very profession which has led to the loss of your career, and so again, the weight which that factor carries must be significantly reduced.”<\/p>\n
Hadjina was ordered to pay back $481,605 to the Victorian Legal Services Board after it paid that sum and interest back to the woman from its fidelity fund \u2014 a pool of money set aside for victims of fraud committed by legal professionals.<\/p>\n
Hadjina will be eligible for parole after two years and six months’ imprisonment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Melbourne lawyer caught stealing from a grieving widow who was his client has been sentenced to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1108,2973,190745,43,2732,647,44,5220,44600,37777,58040,41,39,42,40,46236],"class_list":["post-344580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-court","tag-courts","tag-dean-hadjina","tag-headlines","tag-jail","tag-melbourne","tag-news","tag-prison","tag-sentence","tag-stealing","tag-theft","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-widow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344580","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=344580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}