A former Home Affairs employee has been given a suspended jail sentence for unauthorised access to records.

The former employee received a 14-month suspended jail sentence for a range of offences, including abuse of public office, unauthorised disclosure of official information, and unauthorised access to sensitive Home Affairs records for her family, friends, associates, and tenants.  

The person’s actions spanned more than a decade, from December 2010 to January 2022, during which she accessed departmental records to aid her friends, former tenants, and even herself. 

According to court documents, the information she retrieved and shared included personal data she later passed on to her friends, who used it to file reports through the Border Watch Online Report. 

She also provided visa advice to former tenants, sometimes helping them understand the process or even steering them away from applications likely to be rejected, in one case saving her friends a potential loss of $6,800. 

Additionally, she accessed records to support her own legal applications in the NSW Supreme Court.

The Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney sentenced her to 14 months' imprisonment after she entered a guilty plea. She was released on a two-year good behaviour bond.

Deputy Chief Magistrate Theo Tsavdaridis condemned the conduct, describing it as “egregious”, “dishonest”, and “quite a fall from grace”.

The investigation, known as Operation Angelo, was a collaborative effort between the former Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI) and Home Affairs, with oversight moving to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) in July 2023. 

The conviction is the sixth in a string of cases managed by the NACC since it took over.

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