Fake baby: Woman’s $41,000 scam exposed

By Monique Preston

Oct 11, 2024

A woman has faced court after receiving more than $41,000 in government payments for a child that did not exist.

A woman made up a fake baby and forged a birth certificate to illegally claim more than $41,000 in government payments.

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Sophie Grace Miller, 26, of Kyabram, pleaded guilty in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to two counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception from Services Australia.

The court heard Miller claimed a total of $41,880.23 from Services Victoria for a daughter she said she had given birth to, but the child did not exist.

The money was claimed under the single parenting payment between February 24, 2023 and April 18, 2023, and family tax benefit payments between July 5, 2021 and April 18, 2023.

Miller had told authorities she had given birth to a daughter named Amity McLeod on July 5, 2021, but the court was told the Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages said that no child of this name or date of birth existed.

The Services Australia prosecutor told the court Miller had made up the birth certificate, with the signature of the registrar identical to a birth certificate signed in 1998.

Miller’s defence solicitor, Ian Michaelson, said his client had committed a “fundamentally dishonest act”.

While magistrate Simon Zebrowski said the dishonesty occurred over a significant period of time and was sophisticated, Mr Michaelson argued that it was sophisticated in the forging of the birth certificate, but was not in the way his client gave her own name and bank details for the money to be deposited into.

Mr Michaelson said it was a matter of “need, not greed” that had led to the offences, saying his client was living in a share house in Bendigo and not able to make ends meet on Centrelink’s JobSeeker allowance when she started to claim the benefits.

The charges show the benefits were claimed by Miller while living in both the Bendigo suburb of Kennington and in Kyabram.

Miller was sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order, which included 150 hours of community work.

Under the order, she must undergo mental health treatment and take part in offending behaviour programs, with up to 50 hours of these programs able to count as her community work.

She was also ordered to pay back the $41,880.23 to Services Australia.