Former prison finance officer stole $315,000 from inmates’ family members
Rabhi Sobhi took the bail surety from prisoners’ loved ones and altered financial records. His case involved the longest delay a judge described seeing in 30 years.
As family members of inmates at a major Sydney prison complex paid significant amounts of money to secure their loved ones’ release on bail, Rabhi Sobhi oversaw the system’s management.
However, behind closed doors, the 47-year-old regularly abused this position of trust, exploiting people during incredibly stressful times by stealing or misappropriating about $315,000 over more than two years.
Rabhi Sobhi enters Darlinghurst District Court ahead of his sentence.Credit: Edwina Pickles
Sobhi avoided jail for his crimes – largely due to what a judge described as the longest delay she’d seen in her 30-year-career – in the NSW District Court earlier this month.
Between January 2012 and August 2014, Sobhi was employed by Corrective Services New South Wales as the Sole Finance Officer of Public Funds at the Silverwater Correctional Complex in Sydney’s west.
Before sentencing him to a three-year intensive correction order for 103 larceny and fraud offences, Judge Sharon Harris outlined the agreed facts.
She said Sobhi was financially stable during his relatively unsophisticated offending and was not riddled by debt or addiction, leaving his motive unclear.
“It was opportunism in a workplace where significant sums of cash were readily available, and the offender was systematically stealing,” Harris said, adding he destroyed and manipulated documents to remain undetected.
“It is important to emphasise the offender’s abuse of his position of trust.”
The judge described Silverwater prison’s finance office at the time as “shambolic”, short-staffed and having procedures that were not always followed, creating an ideal environment for Sobhi’s deception.
Inmates’ supporters would visit a window to deposit cash, either as bail surety – when an “acceptable person” guarantees a defendant’s adherence to bail by pledging money to the court that is forfeited if certain conditions are breached – or to be used at the prison’s “canteen”.
Cashiers would place a cash-filled envelope and manual receipt in a safe, which Sobhi had access to.
On 63 reported occasions from 2012 to 2014, Sobhi took the cash from these envelopes before it could be taken to the bank. He would then change numbers on the balance-counting Excel spreadsheets made by junior cashiers to reflect reduced bank deposits.