IT contractor sentenced in Australian maritime museum fraud

A former IT support contractor to the Australian National Maritime Museum will spend at least 15 months behind bars over a ‘trusted insider’ attack.

The Macquarie Park man, now 25, was employed as an IT contractor by a third-party provider to the museum.

At the time of his arrest, the man was accused of initiating unauthorised access to “several systems and servers” of the museum, modifying bank account details and obtaining financial account information for individuals and companies contracted to the museum.

In a statement yesterday, the Australian Federal Police said the man had been able to defraud “a dozen victims” of more than $66,000 before the museum “detected irregularities in its financial records in November 2022”.

Police said that some of the money was spent on “4WD upgrades” and “high-powered IT equipment”.

The man was sentenced two-and-a-half years in prison last Friday, with a 15-month non-parole period.

AFP detective superintendent Tim Stainton said the man “exploited his trusted position of employment to fraudulently access and spend thousands of dollars belonging to others for his own benefit.”

“The greedy behaviour in this matter came at the expense of hard-working Australian individuals and business owners,” Stainton said.