During a pre-sentence hearing on Thursday, five victim impact statements were provided to the County Court of Victoria, and four were read aloud.<\/p>\n
The court was told many of the victims were of modest means, had little fat in their budgets, and had their trust breached by Stevens.<\/p>\n
Ben Knight spoke of how the saga resulted in a breakdown of his marriage.<\/p>\n
“We started out excited with plans for a pool and ended up with a hole in our yard for years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The pressure led to fighting between me and my wife over financial loss.”<\/p>\n
Kerry Knight said she felt “stroke-like” symptoms as a result of financial and emotional pressure.<\/p>\n
“The money lost represented years of hard work,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We incurred additional costs completing the pool installation that should never had occurred.<\/p>\n
“We lost and sold our family property.”<\/p>\n
In his impact statement, Rod Charman described Stevens as a “juvenile delinquent”, saying he handled the matter immaturely during court proceedings.<\/p>\n
“The anger and disgust I feel towards Mr Stevens is immeasurable,” he said.<\/p>\n
“He has demonstrated a complete lack of integrity to his responsibility as a business person.”<\/p>\n
Tina Charman said she felt bitterness and resentment towards Stevens, and had now established a distrust for tradespeople and strangers.<\/p>\n
“All of this could have been avoided if Mr Stevens just paid us back our money and we all could have moved on with our lives,” she said.<\/p>\n
Compensation claims and precedents<\/p>\n
The court heard Stevens had accepted an obligation to repay one couple, but was resisting agreeing to repay others until the amount owed was determined.<\/p>\n
The court heard the $167,798.75 being considered for the purposes of Stevens’s sentence may end up different to the total being sought by the victims.<\/p>\n
The court was told Stevens had paid $10,000 back to the Knights.<\/p>\n
![\"man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/91ad7cccfa51fab278826073aad6e7eb.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Nick Stevens has been found guilty of fraud and deception, and is awaiting sentencing. (AAP: David Crosling)<\/p>\n
Barrister Jim Stavris raised two precedents ahead of sentencing.<\/p>\n
One was the sentence handed to Dylan DiPierdomenico, the son of AFL legend Robert “Dipper” DiPierdomenico, for defrauding $140,000 from a golfing wholesaler.<\/p>\n
He was handed a nine-month term of imprisonment.<\/p>\n
The other precedent was the recent conviction of top Melbourne silk Norman O’Bryan, who defrauded clients of a class action lawsuit.<\/p>\n
He was ordered to undertake 600 hours of community work as part of a four-year community corrections order.<\/p>\n
Mr Stavris told the court Stevens was a vulnerable prisoner due to his notoriety as an ex-AFL player.<\/p>\n
He told the court at times Stevens had been isolated 23 hours a day for his protection.<\/p>\n
“He’s going to do his time a bit harder than most, and in my submission the community doesn’t get any benefit of him being in prison,” Mr Stavris said.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Toni Stokes later retorted that Stevens showed no evidence of remorse, and maintained his innocence.<\/p>\n
“He’s a blue-collar worker, but it’s a white-collar offence,” Ms Stokes said.<\/p>\n
“The need for punishment and denunciation in this case is that anything without a term of imprisonment, head sentence and non-parole period would be out of range.”<\/p>\n
Judge Fiona Todd ordered a community corrections order assessment, but warned Stevens he was unlikely to receive a combination sentence.<\/p>\n
“The role of punishment and denunciation is powerful in this case,” Judge Todd said.<\/p>\n
“The persistence of the offending, the impact on those involved \u2026 there is a role for punishment here.”<\/p>\n
Stevens has been in custody for 52 days and will be sentenced on June 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former AFL footballer Nick Stevens has been warned he is likely to remain behind bars after he is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[638,64,63,1108,354,48066,263380,85,660],"class_list":["post-684870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-court","tag-fraud","tag-mildura","tag-nick-stevens","tag-sports","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684870","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=684870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}