A woman who was jailed for swindling nearly $800,000 from two men she met on Tinder has appealed to be let out of jail early because a judge said she used the dating app as a “hunting ground”.
Jocelyn Zakhour was last year jailed for a maximum of four years and six months after fleecing her victims by convincing them to invest in non-existent business ventures to feed her gambling addiction.
She conned one man out of $728,700 and another of $61,000 all the while she was living at Melbourne’s Crown Casino in 2018.
After she pleaded guilty to six blackmail and extortion charges, she was sentenced by County Court of Victoria judge Gregory Lyons to a non-parole period of two years and eight months.
Zakhour was 39 when she started chatting with a 54-year-old chief executive on Tinder in June 2018, quickly forming a relationship with the man.
They were only together for a week when she brought up her idea of buying a blueberry farm in NSW which never existed, the court previously heard.
The chief executive believed he was giving his girlfriend money for seeds, farm worker salaries and harvests.
He transferred her $728,700 over 17 instalments over five months with all of it ending up inside the poker machines or on the tables at Crown Casino.
Her requests for money eventually escalated into demands and she sent him 240 emails in three weeks threatening his ex-wife, his mother and his children.
After her arrest, it was discovered that around the same time Zakhour had met a 45-year-old financial planner on Tinder and in similar circumstances convinced him to transfer her $61,000 for a non-existent fruit and vegetable farm.
The court heard that on one day in June 2018 she convinced one man to transfer her $110,000 and the other to give her $50,000.
“Your offending spanned across two victims, men you had met on Tinder. I can only conclude that you used the dating app as a hunting ground to seek out and exploit your victims,” judge Lyons said when Zakhour was sentenced for six counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception.
She has appealed to the Supreme Court of Victoria, arguing her sentence was manifestly excessive and that judge Lyons could not conclude that she had planned to use Tinder to find victims.
Her solicitor Catherine Boston on Tuesday told the court that she had been in contact with one of the men for four to five months before asking him for money.
“It was not open to his honour to find beyond reasonable doubt that Ms Zakhour used Tinder as a hunting ground to seek out and explore for victims,” Ms Boston said.
Ms Boston also argued that Zakhour’s sentence was too severe and that she ought to be re-sentenced to 17 to 18 months in prison combined with a community corrections order.
However crown prosecutor Christopher Boyce described her sentence as “moderate and well within the range.”
“In light of the blackmail and extortion, one looks at these sentences in view of the horrific nature of this offending, one comes to the view the individual sentences are extremely moderate if not light,” Mr Boyce said.
Justices Cameron Macaulay and Stephen McLeish reserved their decision for a later date.
