Man Poses As ASIS Spy to Scam Football Players
Courtesy of AAP via Yahoo 7.
An Adelaide man who posed as a spy and boasted of having people kidnapped, tortured and even killed has been jailed for elaborate scams to con former AFL players out of thousands of dollars.
Samuel Hastings pleaded guilty to three counts of blackmail. His victims included former Sydney Swans and St Kilda players Robbie Neill and Troy Gray.
In 2008, Hastings used his friendship with Neill to con him into believing his and his partner’s lives were at risk.
Posing as a member of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Hastings then spent 14 months concocting elaborate tales about people linked to bikies wanting Mr Neill and his partner killed.
He had the couple pay him more than $78,000 to cover payments to his ‘fellow spies’ who he claimed had captured and tortured some of the people involved in the threats.
The money was also to be used to pay for “memory loss serum” to ensure those people who had been tortured forgot what had happened to them.
He pulled a similar scam on a woman in 2009, convincing her there was a man threatening to sexually assault her, before turning his attention to Mr Gray whom he had met through his friendship with Mr Neill.
Hastings sent some messages to Mr Gray’s mobile phone, which included death threats and personal abuse.
He then told Mr Gray he had obtained information that there was a man who wanted him killed and that he could help using his contacts with police and the mafia.
Mr Gray paid him $1000 but later went to police.
The police set up an undercover operation, with the former AFL player turned television presenter wearing a listening device at a meeting at which he handed over another $4000 as part of the $16,000 Hastings had demanded for his services.
Passing sentence in the South Australian District Court on Monday, Judge Steven Milsteed said Hastings had regarded the former AFL players as soft targets.
Describing the offending as evil and despicable, he said the 38-year-old had a paranoid view of the world that allowed him to concoct the elaborate lies.
“It was a callous betrayal of trust and friendship in order to obtain money,” the judge said.
But, he said, Hastings also derived a sense of enjoyment out of concocting stories about the underworld, describing his stories as rich in detail.
“They would put a John le Carre novel to shame,” he said.
Judge Milsteed jailed Hastings for seven years with a non-parole-period of four years and six months.