By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim
Romanian man Alexandru Badaric came to Sydney in April 2023 and was joined by his partner and co-offender Izabela Vintila in June. The pair received two shimming devices posted from London in July 2023. Shimming devices are strips of metal placed on an ATM, which record the data on customer’s card chips, to allow fake cards to be produced to withdraw money from victims’ accounts.
Badaric also opened six accounts at five banks using a fake passport and customer details between 12 and 23 May 2023. On 16 July, he then used four card numbers from four different accounts to withdraw $2,100. Badaric went on to install shimming devices in Sydney in June, while Vintila did the same in regard to ATMs in Melbourne the following month.
Over 25 May to 11 August 2023, Badaric opened four more bank accounts in his own name and transferred cash into them as well. There were credit transactions amounting to $22,495 and debit transactions of up to $22,164. Some of these transactions saw money being transferred into international back accounts.
On arrest on 4 August 2023, the pair were found in possession of $12,935 in cash, while $1,150 had been transferred into bank accounts under false names in late July 2023. The total of $14,085 in cash and $22,495 in bank transactions were all as a result of shimming.
In an affidavit to the NSW District Court, Badaric explained that his deceased wife had breast cancer in 2012. He’d spent over €300,000 on her treatment in Turkey. He had sold his restaurant business, his house and car to do so. His wife subsequently needed more surgery, so he borrowed £35,000 from private lenders in London. However, she died in 2015, leaving behind two young kids.
In 2016, Badaric went to London to pay off his debt. He borrowed another £10,000 to buy goods in Romania to sell in the UK. The debt grew to £60,000. In 2021, he met Vintila, who suggested refinancing the loan. The lender then met with Badaric in 2022 and told him about the shimming scheme to pay off his debt, and the Romanian felt that if he refused the retribution could be serious.
Long list of fraud offences
Badaric pleaded guilty to a list of seven charges at the earliest possible date in the NSW Local Court. This included one count of possess identification information, contrary to section 372.2 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), which is an offence that carries up to 3 years imprisonment.
The Romanian man further admitted guilt to one count of provide false foreign travel documents, contrary to section 22 of the Foreign Passports (Law Enforcement and Security) Act 2005 (Cth). This crime carries up to 10 years imprisonment and/or a fine of $330,000.
One count of the provision of false or misleading information, contrary to section 136(1) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) was further involved. This offence makes the perpetrator liable to up to 10 years inside and/or a fine of $330,000.
Badaric pleaded guilty to one count of dealing with the proceeds of crime of $10,000 or more, which is contained under section 400.6 of the Criminal Code. This is a crime that carries up to 10 years imprisonment.
One count of possession of a thing with intent to dishonestly obtain personal financial information was another of the crimes Badaric was convicted in relation to. It sits under section 480.5 of the Criminal Code, and it carries up to 3 years gaol time.
The inmate further pleaded guilty to one count of dishonestly obtaining personal financial information, contrary to section 480.4 of the Criminal Code, which can see a person put away for up to 5 years prison time.
The final count on Badaric’s charge sheet was one count of attempt to dishonestly obtain personal financial information, which triggered the section 480.4 offence and the attempt provision under section 11.1 of the Criminal Code. A person convicted of attempting to commit an offence faces the same maximum penalty that the offence attempted carries, which in this case is up to 5 years.
On 30 August 2024, NSW District Court Judge Georgia Turner outlined that Badaric committed the crimes for financial gain, as there was no evidence of any significant debt. She then sentenced him to 4 years and 2 months prison time, with non-parole set at 2 years and 6 months. This sentence reflected a 25 percent discount for the utilitarian value provided by Badaric’s early guilty pleas.
Grounds made out
Badaric appealed his sentenced to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal (NSWCCA) on 9 July 2025. He did so based on two grounds.
The first ground involved the sentencing judge being in error when finding there was no evidence of the burden of the debt, despite the unchallenged evidence that there was and the second ground suggested the judge had been error in assessing objective seriousness, as she’d found he only ceased his actions due to detection and further that the impact upon the victims was significant.
The offender put it to the court that the judge had been in error in assessing the scale of the fraud crimes, as she’d accepted that he was committing the offences to pay of his debt and that there was evidence in his affidavit that it was a sizable debt, which went unchallenged by the prosecution.
Her Honour had assessed the objective seriousness of the crimes as “serious”, due to the “sophisticated, technical and lucrative” nature of the fraud crimes, along with much planning that went into the enterprise, which included training in the UK, procurement of false identification papers, travelling to Australia, the shimming devices and obtaining the details of 35 ATM cards.
NSWCCA Justice Deborah Sweeney found on 6 August 2025 that ground one had been made out because the evidence of a substantial financial debt that motivated the offending was before the court and left unchallenged by the prosecution, so the sentencing judge had been wrong to simply dismiss the key cause of the offending.
The second ground was also made out because, while it was open for the judge to find that the police arresting Badaric had led to the cessation of his offending and that some of his victims were facing significant financial harm due to his crimes, the error caused by denying the burden of the debt as per ground one meant that the judge had taken a more adverse assessment of the offending.
“I accept there was an intended limit to the applicant’s offending, which involved the repayment of the debt,” Justice Sweeney set out. “To the extent that her Honour mistook that there was no evidence of the magnitude of the debt, that had the capacity to affect the sentence in that her Honour may have taken a more adverse view of the applicant’s proposed offending.”
Resentencing the offender
Those making up the rest of the three-justice bench presiding over the appeal, NSWCCA Justices Derek Price and Natalie Adams, agreed with their colleague’s findings relating to the grounds of appeal being made out. However, the pair did not agree with the new sentence that Justice Sweeney recommended be handed down in place of the original.
Justice Sweeney considered that a further error occurred in sentencing as the judge had focused on the proceeds of crime offence and made all other offences ancillary to that, while her Honour considered the obtaining of the shimming devices as primary, and she proceeded to impose a new overall head sentence, much less than the original, of 3 years and 6 months.
Justice Adams said she agreed with Justice Sweeney up until resentencing, but she considered that no comment should be made about which of the list of offences was primary, and she suggested a different fresh sentence of 4 years prison time, with overall non-parole remaining at 2 years and 6 months.
Justice Price agreed with Adams, making the two in the majority, and on 6 August 2025, Badaric was handed a lesser head sentence, however the offender continues to be required to serve at least 2 years and 6 months gaol time in the NSW prison system.
