How to sue a scammer in VCAT

Melbourne had one of the strictest COVID lockdowns in the world. With stores, schools and workplaces shut, I decided to purchase a small bus with the intention of converting it into a motorhome. Under the law, any modifications to the vehicle require certification from an accredited engineer.

I hired semi-retired Dr Laurence “Laurie” Sparke (Sparke Engineering) to make the modifications and then certify his work. He is a world-renowned engineer with an Order of Australia award for his contributions to vehicle safety. (If he was British, that’s equivalent to a knighthood!)

When he tried to cheat me out of my money and then gaslight me into believing I was scamming him, I knew I needed to give him a good old-fashioned spanking.

This article is my story of venturing into the world of VCAT. It will mainly cover the lessons I learnt along the way.

It should be noted that I have a law degree (which I studied in parallel to engineering). However, I never practised as a lawyer. Some stages of the process were confusing but I eventually figured it out. For a complete layperson, it could be daunting but hopefully, I will demystify it for you.

The Facts

1. I approached Dr Sparke via telephone (since it was during COVID). I never met him until court.
2. We negotiated our arrangement. The contract stated:

• I pay him $800 upfront.
• He will design and weld/mount the 3 provided seats (via his third-party subcontractor). I had to drive the vehicle to the subcontractor’s workshop.
• He will provide me with the certification.
• I then pay him the final instalment of $800 for a total of $1600.
• He had his bank account details on the contract stating where funds had to be transferred to.

3. I approached other competitors for quotes but since he was semi-retired, he was by far the cheapest.
4. After I transferred the initial instalment, I took the bus to the subcontractor’s workshop. After 1–2 weeks, I was informed the work was complete — but I had to pay the final instalment of $800 before I was permitted to collect my bus.
5. Despite being confused, I transferred the money and collected my bus since I was uncomfortable with it being held hostage at a workshop 3 hours north of Melbourne in the middle of nowhere during intermittent COVID lockdowns.
6. I then asked for the certification. Dr Sparke ignored all my phone calls for months. Without the certification, it was technically illegal for me to even drive the bus.
7. Eventually, I got an email saying I was still owing the final $800 instalment and he wouldn’t mail me the certification unless I paid up.
8. I checked all my bank statements. The money had definitely been transferred. I was confused how he couldn’t have received it. I kept asking him to check his records but he emphatically insisted that he received only one instalment. He then accused me of trying to scam him.
9. I still gave him the benefit of the doubt. I contacted my bank (we had the same bank) and they transferred me to a special team that handles fund transfer disputes. The team member said they could see the transferred funds in his account.
10. Since Dr Sparke continually insisted the funds did not transfer, I asked the bank to transfer the money back to me so I could then re-transfer it to him.
11. The bank called me and said they managed to contact Dr Sparke for authorisation to transfer the funds back to me but he had refused.
12. That was the moment I realised he was scamming me! I was furious. This whole process wasted even more weeks. I asked the bank to send me a written document proving the transfer because I was now ready to go to court.
13. I immediately sent him a letter of demand warning him exactly what my next (legal) steps were. Dr Sparke didn’t budge. I figured he’d probably run this scam many times before. Most people begrudgingly pay the additional $800 and leave on their merry way. From my point of view, I couldn’t risk paying the ransom and falling for another scam!
14. It seemed the only language he understood was state-sanctioned force. After many more months, I finally initiated legal proceedings with VCAT in January 2022.

Which Court?

There were realistically 2 courts I could have filed the dispute with: VCAT and the Magistrates Court of Victoria.

After some research, it became clear that VCAT was most appropriate for small civil claims.

It’s meant to be faster (it still took 2 years from the filing date to judgment, even after being granted an expedited hearing). Lawyers are ordinarily not permitted for small claims to keep legal costs down. This also means that if you lose, you don’t have to pay the other party’s legal fees.

VCAT is also not a court, but I will refer to it as a court. It is a tribunal which means the the judge has a lot of flexibility in deciding what evidence is permitted to assist them in making a finding. In a real court, the Evidence Act applies which means that you would probably need to hire a barrister to navigate the rules. Barristers also charge on average $2000 per court day.

Filing costs were only $220.90. If your case goes for more than 1 day, the price increases per day. Mine did not require more than 1 day. At the Magistrates Court, it would have cost many times more.

Once your case gets accepted by VCAT, they will eventually send you a few documents informing you when your hearing will be. It includes a guide for laypeople on how the day will go and how you have to prepare for it.

You have 7 days from that date to provide (by email to the Defendant and VCAT):

a full copy of your VCAT application together with copies of all documents you will use to support your case — including contracts, invoices, correspondence, photos, expert reports, and all witnesses who will give evidence, including expert witnesses.

The 7-day rule did not seem to be strictly enforced because I didn’t provide my full evidence list for months but VCAT did not seem to mind. I also added more evidence as I went along right up to the day before the hearing. The defendant did likewise. Perhaps due to COVID, the rules were leniently enforced so I wouldn’t test my luck again.

A mistake I made in my initial application was I did not write up my claim in terms of the “legal” cause of action, and subsequently address each element of the cause of action. That was because I wrongly interpreted the “application form” to be designed more for laypersons. This came back to bite me which I will discuss later.

A cause of action is a legal term that means what law you are alleging the Defendant is violating. To win your case, the cause of action would have certain elements you have to prove. You need to address each element of the cause of action and highlight what evidence, statutory laws/regulations and case law you will be using to prove each element.

Since my case was a breach of contract case, the elements are proving that a valid contract existed between me and Dr Sparke and that I satisfied all of my obligations under our agreement but the Defendant did not (hence the breach).

I had to have clearly highlighted what evidence (eg. documents etc) I was going to use to prove each element and also what sections of the relevant statutes were applicable.

If you don’t do this step properly, the Defendant will be able to claim “vagueness” or “surprise”. The idea is the defendant must be able to read your claim and know exactly what they are being sued for and what evidence etc you will use to support your case. This is so they can properly prepare their arguments and collect their evidence to rebut your claim before arriving in court.

VCAT Day 1 (late June 2022)

Due to COVID, the hearings were held via video chat using Zoom. There was a compulsory mediation session in the morning and then the actual court case in the afternoon.

Mediation

The mediation session was facilitated by a trained mediator. The mediator’s job is to try and get the parties to settle out of court. All mediation sessions are “without prejudice” which means that all discussions during the session are kept confidential from the judge.

This was the first time I was seeing Dr Sparke. He was sitting at a desk with all his accolades on the back wall for all to see. His charisma was through the roof. He had comprehensively charmed the mediator like the way Donald Trump hypnotises his political base. I felt like they both ganged up on me to pressure me to withdraw the case, with the mediator continually hinting that I had no chance of winning. The mediator, who had no legal education, accepted Dr Sparke’s nonsensical arguments. If he had done his job properly, he would have stayed in his lane and not taken sides. His lane was to mediate towards settlement only.

I could easily see a layperson succumbing to the pressure and accepting Dr Sparke’s measly final offer. Since I was legally trained, I knew the strength of my case and stood my ground, remembering Donald Trump’s advice: “No deal is better than a bad deal” in his book The Art of the Deal.

I proceeded to argue my case as if it were the hearing.

This was a tactical mistake because I exposed to Dr Sparke my plan of attack for the actual hearing. In return, he gave back nothing but lies and bullshit. In the future, I know that I should not utter a word unless I want to actually negotiate a settlement. I should have treated it like the “right to silence” during a police arrest.

Once the mediation was over, the mediator revealed that they didn’t have a judge available for the afternoon (perhaps they had COVID?). As such, the hearing would be postponed. Although I was initially frustrated by the additional delay, the postponement had a silver lining.

I now knew that Dr Sparke was willing to potentially perjure himself with zero hesitation. I already knew he was a bullshit artist, but this was next level. I would have been totally underprepared for the hearing — I had no choice but to bring watertight evidence. I also saw how unbelievably charismatic he was. The moment he unveiled his charm and mentioned his Order of Australia and Doctorate, I knew most (if not all adjudicators) were going to subconsciously equate it with integrity. That’s human nature. If there was ever a situation where it was going to be my word against his word, I was a sitting duck.

I needed to devise a strategy to overcome that handicap.

VCAT Day 2 (Early February 2023)

COVID lockdowns were over so we met in real life. The judge introduced herself. Dr Sparke and I also introduced ourselves to the court. The judge stated that I was only allocated 1 hour for the entire hearing, hence I had to be quick.

As the Plaintiff, it was my job to argue my case first. However, since it was a Tribunal, it was more free-flowing and it was more like a chat amongst “friends”. The Judge and the Defendant regularly interjected in a cordial manner.

My strategy was to narrate a story that marketed Dr Sparke as a scam artist who concocted the entire scheme to squeeze an additional $800 that was not part of our agreement. He did this by holding the certification documents hostage. That was my “theory of the case” because it best fit the facts. After all, he had more than a year to check his bank accounts and remedy the situation. In one email exchange, he implied that the certification was just collecting dust in his home until I paid up.

I made sure I informed the court of his Order of Australia and Doctorate. Everyone in the room already knew of these credentials because it was in his submitted filing documents, but at least I was able to define what they meant in my own terms. I was able to start my opening remarks by highlighting that an Order of Australia did not equate to integrity “…because he doesn’t have any integrity”. I made other remarks along those lines. I kept reiterating my catchphrase “hook, line and sinker” to explain how he operated his overall scam that ultimately fooled poor-innocent-me.

This measure was an attempt to counter his reputation that was preloaded in the judge’s mind.

My opening statements clearly rattled Dr Sparke. His charisma evaporated into thin air and would never reappear. He transformed into a frail 80-year-old man who was a shadow of what he was during the mediation day. That was a win in my books.

He made various complaints to defend his honour. The judge felt offended on his behalf and sided with him. She subtly cautioned that I have to tread very carefully if I was going to attack his reputation as ferociously as I did. I explained that a significant part of my case was based on criticising his credibility and I was prepared to bear the burden of supporting my assertions with strong evidence. She allowed me to proceed but I knew I lost her respect … but I was confident that once I presented my evidence I would win back her respect. She would have no choice but to see him for who he really was.

[embed]

I had hundreds of printed pages of evidence (eg. emails, photos etc.) with me which I had provided to Dr Sparke and the judge by email beforehand. The judge realised I had way too much evidence for the 1 hour that was allocated for my hearing. She said that she would have to adjourn the case. When I asked when that would be, she looked at her calendar and said it could be many months away.

That was when it hit me. Unbeknownst to me, the mediator had influence over how many hours/days to book the courtroom — which he did using his non-existent legal knowledge. He believed it was an open-and-shut case and expected a summary judgment against me. Needless to say, the judge disagreed with him!

That was when Dr Sparke “frustratingly” slammed a few papers on the table and complained that he would be losing out on another day of business. He then asked the judge if he would be able to win monetary compensation from me for the time lost. The judge explained that VCAT doesn’t work like that.

As a trained actor I felt his “performance” was slightly “off”. It’s what everyday movie-goers would colloquially call “bad acting”. I inferred what effect on the judge he was intending for — but his execution was bad. He was trying to get sympathy from the judge. This gave me a major clue that a substantial part of his legal response was going to be about me wasting his and the court’s time with a meritless case.

The accuracy of my prediction would have to wait as we lived to fight another day.

She also ordered me to arrange all my evidence in a binder with numbered tabs. She felt that shuffling through the evidence as I presented my case was too much time-wastage given the tight schedule.

VCAT Day 3 (Early August 2023)

When we arrived for the hearing day, I had my lawyer friend with me. The judge informed me that lawyers weren’t permitted but I told her that he was only coming as a “support person” (which is allowed). He had helped me rehearse and prepare for the case the night before and just wanted to see my performance.

The entire case restarted from scratch. This time I informed the judge that I was not going to explicitly accuse Dr Sparke of being a scammer. Dr Sparke accepted my apology. It also seemed to get the judge on my side as I had hoped. In reality, she already had the memory of my accusations from the last hearing so it served its purpose. I was still going to imply that he was a scammer “in between the lines”. My case was dependent on it. It all worked like clockwork.

When it was Dr Sparke’s turn to reply, he decided that it was fruitless to argue that he didn’t receive the final $800 transfer. I had the paperwork from our bank proving my claim. He claimed that he had mistakenly not seen the transfer in his bank statements. I mentioned that I begged him to check numerous times. I mentioned that I had sent screenshots proving the transfer (It’s not like I had access to his bank records). I told the court that he wasn’t running an ASX200-listed company with a million transactions a day. Etc etc. The judge berated him for not giving an adequate response for why it took him many several months to admit to having received the agreed amount when an admission could have avoided the legal action in the first place.

Dr Sparke’s new claim was that he was not legally permitted to give the certification due to technicalities in the Australian Design Rules. He claimed my vehicle:

1. Can’t be registered as a Passenger Vehicle because it doesn’t have front airbags.
2. Can’t be registered as a bus because it has less than 9 seats.
3. Can’t be registered as a Goods Carrying Vehicle.
4. Can be legally driven without the certification thus reducing the damages amount I was seeking.

He had also submitted numerous references as evidence written by various Professors and other acclaimed individuals who all vouched for his impeccable character. I’m not 100% sure why, because Dr Sparke didn’t use them or bring them up.

It was quite laughable because he was perjuring himself extensively. Previously he had stated that when we first got acquainted, he assisted me in the process of reregistering the vehicle as a 2-seater after removing all the back passenger seats and sealing up the mounting holes left behind on the floor.

I just asked the judge to turn to Tab 5 in the evidence folder. I showed a document from VicRoads stating the bus was registered as a “Goods Carrying Vehicle” with 2 seats many months before I even knew his name. I let the judge make the appropriate inference to his credibility.

So when he now claimed he couldn’t certify the bus due to technicalities, I reminded the judge that ordinarily he would be an “expert witness” but as the Defendant, he was obliged to bring his own independent expert witness. I countered his arguments by showing all the prior quotes from competitors who were all willing to do the job and provide certification.

One by one I just kept refuting his assertions. When he said it couldn’t be registered as a Passenger Vehicle, I just showed the judge a character reference he provided attesting that he was a renowned expert in airbags. I then pointed to the photos of the airbags in my vehicle. When he said it couldn’t be registered as a “Goods Carrying Vehicle”, I just showed him the VicRoads document showing that it already was registered as a “Goods Carrying Vehicle”. When he said I could still legally drive the vehicle, I just pointed the judge to the appropriate sections and rules in the various Victorian Road Acts and Regulations that I had provided to everyone.

He deflated like a balloon as we both witnessed the judge’s demeanour change in real time as her respect for him diminished. This was the turning point when I saw her high standing for him evaporate away.

In the end, I concluded by highlighting that neither party was disputing whether I completed my obligations under the agreement. The only issue was whether he completed his obligations. I argued that the contract required him to provide me with a certification and without it, I posed the question of what benefits I was receiving from the contract given I couldn’t even legally drive it and I had paid $1600 to Dr Sparke.

The judge was ready to call it a day when Dr Sparke threw a curveball. He said that he needed extra time to counter some of the evidence I had provided. The judge agreed with him because although I had submitted to him by email each and every piece of supporting evidence, Acts and Cases I was potentially going to use, I hadn’t made clear how I was going to use the evidence. This is called “surprise” to the Defendant. I was meant to have submitted a proper “pleadings” document to the Defendant well before arriving in court.

It came back to bite me. The judge wanted to schedule another hearing day many months into the future. We both argued that we didn’t want another day in court as we were exhausted by the litigation. She ordered that Dr Sparke provide his new arguments and evidence by email within 30 days, after which I would get 30 days to respond.

Dr Sparke’s 30 days

I was expecting an independent expert witness report from another engineer refuting all my rebuttals. Instead, I got nothing! He just wasted my time. He possibly tried to get a fellow engineer to write an expert witness report supporting his claims but he wasn’t able to get anyone to perjure themself.

My 30 days

I just summarised my arguments from the hearing and submitted them. I didn’t even mention that he didn’t submit anything for me to respond to because I figured it was not a good look for him anyway.

Judgement Day (23 December 2023)

We both received an email from the judge just before Christmas informing us that she was ready to deliver the judgment. She informed me (as the Plaintiff) that she needed the Defendant’s home address. I told her that I didn’t have his address. Dr Sparke did not volunteer that information either.

A week later the judgment arrived by email. I won the case. I won $6050. I also won the $220.90 VCAT filing fee. Unfortunately I was not awarded the certification because court’s are usually reluctant to demand “specific performance”.

Post Judgement

Dr Sparke had 30 days to appeal to the Supreme Court. I waited a few months. I was in the clear.

I wrote an email to Dr Sparke with my bank account details asking him to transfer the funds. The tables had turned and I was now asking him for money.

As you probably expected, I didn’t get a reply or the funds. He was a wealthy man with a Ferrari in his garage. He had a super successful career in Academia and Industry — rising to the top of General Motors Holden. Through all my interactions with him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had Asperger’s Syndrome, hence the stubbornness and inability to do what’s in his best interest.

I finally sent him a warning that I was going to proceed with more legal action to recover the funds. Again no response.

Recovery

It turns out VCAT has no teeth to enforce its own judgements. I approached a few law firms but no one wanted to help with such a low-value case.

In the end, I managed to get some unofficial guidance from an experienced lawyer Alistair who I went to law school with.

He told me I had to register the judgement with the Magistrates Court of Victoria as a preliminary step. The cost of that registration is covered by the VCAT filing fees so I asked VCAT to do that for me. It only took a day or 2.

After that, I had to obtain a “Warrant to Seize Property” from the Magistrates Court using Form 68A. That would legally allow the Sheriff’s Office to enter Dr Sparke’s home and confiscate enough property to sell. I was trying to recover the judgment amount, the interest accruing (at the current rate of 10%) and the Sheriff’s Office’s execution fees ($237.10).

That’s when I hit a major snag. The form required knowledge of his home address. He didn’t even give it to VCAT so he certainly wasn’t going to give it to me.

Since he was running his business as a “sole trader”, the Privacy Act prohibited ASIC from giving anyone those details.

No matter how much I tried to “sweet talk” various government departments, I couldn’t get that information.

After many months of trying to use Google to “discover” those details, I was getting nowhere. Alistair told me the next step was to file a different application to “Summon (Dr Sparke to Court) for an Oral Examination”. The idea is that the court will ask him under oath for a full list of everything he owns — including his home address.

The process of summoning Dr Sparke to court meant it was going to take potentially another year so I was hesitant to take this step.

I also contacted a few private investigators to obtain a quote on how much they would charge to tail him home. The idea was I would get a friend to call Dr Sparke under the pretence that they needed their vehicle certified. Dr Sparke will say meet him at a location (presumably a workshop). The Private Investigators would then tail him when he eventually drives home. The quotes for this kind of service were approximately $1000 per day.

Another Private Investigator said that they had access to a secret database of mobile phone numbers and the corresponding billing address. They were charging approximately $500 upfront irrespective of failure. Others were charging $250 upfront and another $250 upon success. Too many red flags were popping up and I didn’t want to fall for another scam.

Finding A Home address

After months of leads drying up, I was about to give up and take the Oral Examination route. It was reliable and that’s what Alistair had recommended. Out of nowhere, a colleague at my dance school suggested I use the “Australian Electoral Commission — Check my Enrolment” website to determine his address. You can’t get the house number but you can reasonably pin it down to the street name.

The AEC has a database of what electorate every registered voter is in. All you needed was a person’s full name and postcode (which I had from abncheck.com.au) which corresponded to his suburb. I then iterated through every single street name in his suburb. If he didn’t live there, the website said the person wasn’t found. After testing hundreds of street names…

Bingo. I got a match!

I now knew his home address minus the house number. I just needed to find his house number.

I googled his address with various iterations of his name. I didn’t get any useful matches until I (by chance) combined it with “ASIC”. The full address of someone else with his surname came up in a digitalised ASIC Gazette from 2 decades ago. It was too much of a coincidence that someone with his surname happened to have lived on the same street as Dr Sparke.

I Facebook searched that name and discovered via the friends list that it was Dr Sparke’s son. Presto. I now had the home address.

Sending the Sheriff

After filing Form 68A, obtaining the warrant, and paying the sheriff’s execution fees I was told that they would take care of recovering the money after 2–3 months due to a backlog of work.

After 2 months, I received a phone call from the sheriff who said they were outside Dr Sparke’s home. Dr Sparke was insisting he had already paid me the full amount. The sheriff told me he was very persuasive (It’s that charm again)!

I calmly told the sheriff that he tried that same play prior to the legal proceedings. I told him I would get a document from the bank (just as I had to for court) stating that the funds hadn't transferred into my account. The sheriff gave me his email address to send the document. I went to the bank to once again obtain the proof.

Eventually, the Sheriff did whatever scary thing they did and the judgment amount appeared in my bank account as if by magic. It was still missing the sheriff’s execution fee and interest.

I sent an email to Dr Sparke saying that he still owed me at least $484.76. I told him that I was willing to give him a $300 discount if he sent me the certification since it was of no value to him collecting dust. It was a reasonable offer but ego and stubbornness prevailed.

Eventually, the sheriff again did their thing and the remaining money owed eventually arrived in my account. He had transferred funds to the Sheriff’s Office which then mailed me a cheque. This day was late June 2024 — 900 days after filing with VCAT.