NSW: Fake engineer also faked character references -court told
20 Nov 2008 12:08 PMSYDNEY, Nov 20 AAP - A man who admitted faking qualifications to land a job conducting safety audits on Qantas jets also faked the character references supplied to the sentencing judge, a Sydney court has been told.
Timothy Leslie McCormack, 27, pleaded guilty in September to 42 charges in the NSW District Court, including forging a maintenance engineer's licence.
In court on Thursday, it was revealed four character references McCormack had tendered ahead of his sentencing hearing were fakes.
Among the false letters of support was one from a fictional Senior SergeantWoodward, who was said to also be president of the Hornsby Junior Australian Rules Football Club.
"There is no football club by that name," prosecutor Paul McGuire said.
Judge Mark Marien was told the other three references, purportedly from a school counsellor and members of the community, were also created by McCormack.
Judge Marien said it was "so obvious" that they were typed and formatted the same way and signed by the same hand.
"What has occurred in these sentencing procedures is in my experience, an extraordinary event," he said.
The defence asked for the sentencing to be adjourned until next month so they could investigate the possibility McCormack was suffering a "pathological" psychiatric condition.
"There are two competing theories as to what's going on over here ... some pathological condition as alluded to in the research," McCormack's barrister Sydney Jacobs said.
McCormack posed as a licensed aircraft engineer for almost nine months before being discovered in July 2007.
AAP bsbhnwfjlw =0A