42 Charges of Document Falsification Made Worse by Forged Character References in Sentencing

In my last post I showed you some of the potential (and very negative) consequences attached to forging your own character references. The story of Stephanie Beattie is a serious one: fabricating both the references and signatures of four people, including one former colleague in the Victorian Police Force, cannot be easily ignored.

But the following article takes the cake. And this should be a lesson
Forging character references is a very bad idea - particularly when the crimes you're already charged with involve the faking of important credentials!


Timothy McCormark was a former Qantas aircraft maintenance engineer found guilty of 42 charges related to document falsification (including forged results for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority's aircraft maintenance engineer licence).

In November 2008, McCormack was supposed to have been sentenced by Judge Mark Marien of the NSW District Court when (incredibly) the Crown Prosecutor interrupted sentencing procedure to allege that McCormack had in fact forged the character references he was relying upon to get a softer sentence!

So how did he get caught?
The Crown Prosecutor noticed inconsistencies in McCormack's character references from one source in particular - including the misspelling of his own job title and no record of the football club of which he claimed to be President.

And what did McCormack's Counsel have to say to this?
They did as best they could to improve this very dire situation for their client: they called into question his own psychiatric condition and requested an adjournment so that a psychiatrist could have time to assess whether McCormack was a "pathological liar". They contested that if this were found to be the case then he could not be made accountable for this second bout of stupidity.

The Judge disagreed...
Even if McCormack's behaviour was part of a broader pattern of a psychological disorder, he had nonetheless lied intentionally on two occasions - both when committing his serious offences and in attempting to minimise the consequences to himself.

What do you think?
Is Timothy McCormack stupid, or a pathological liar?


Photo: Kate Geraghty