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<\/p>\nFormer AFL player Nick Stevens has been locked up after a jury found him guilty of defrauding multiple families with his regional pool business.<\/p>\n
The ex-Carlton and Port Adelaide footballer was found guilty of obtaining financial advantage by deception in Victoria’s County Court on Monday in a fourth trial after three earlier ones were abandoned.<\/p>\n
Stevens, 46, was accused of defrauding six families in Mildura, in Victoria’s north, a total of $171,000, prosecutors told a jury in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
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Prosecutors said Stevens did not install the pools legally and built them with faults such as cracks or failed to install a pool at all, leaving “giant holes in their backyards”.<\/p>\n
Stevens pleaded not guilty to 18 offences including theft, obtaining financial advantage by deception and using a false document, and took the matter to trial.<\/p>\n
His first trial in May 2025 was aborted after the judge excused themselves from it, with a second trial starting earlier this year.<\/p>\n
However, jurors were discharged from that trial one day after openings, on February 25, over issues with evidence.<\/p>\n
A third jury was empanelled, but they were again discharged on March 5.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Toni Stokes said Stevens installed six legally compliant pools under the supervision of a registered builder, but then went out on his own without the required licence, registration, permits or insurance.<\/p>\n
She said he took money from six families, promising to install pools in their backyards, but none of them were legally compliant.<\/p>\n
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Jurors in his fourth trial returned with a verdict on Monday after retiring to deliberate about their decision on March 25.<\/p>\n
Stevens was found guilty of 13 charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and one charge of using a false document.<\/p>\n
He was found not guilty of one further charge of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage for an alleged $3000 deception.<\/p>\n
Judge Fiona Todd thanked jurors for their assistance as she sent them home.<\/p>\n
Stevens, who had been on bail, was taken into custody after the verdict as Ms Stokes said he was now “very likely” to be facing a reasonable prison term at sentence.<\/p>\n
He will return to court for a pre-sentence hearing on May 21.<\/p>\n
Stevens played 231 games for Port Adelaide and Carlton across 12 years in the AFL, before retiring in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former AFL player Nick Stevens has been locked up after a jury found him guilty of defrauding multiple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-573418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573418","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=573418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}