Josh Hoch found guilty on 13 charges of unlicenced flying and fraud

[jackc]

Was it not called ‘Obtain money under false pretences’. ?

[Bruce Tuncks]

What about taking responsibility for your own actions? I like this idea better than the alternative one of giving up your liberty.

Take vaxing as an example... what is wrong with refusing a vax and then catching the disease and dying?

In flying, I have never hurt anybody and don't plan to. What frightens me is being driven out by cost pressures caused by some lot who treat me like an idiot who needs a lot of ( paid for ) supervision.

[old man emu]

Attempt to commit an offence:

 

(1) A person who attempts to commit an offence is guilty of the offence of attempting to commit that offence and is punishable as if the offence attempted had been committed.

(2) For the person to be guilty, the person’s conduct must be more than merely preparatory to the commission of the offence. The question whether conduct is more than merely preparatory to the commission of the offence is one of fact.

(3) For the offence of attempting to commit an offence, intention and knowledge are fault elements in relation to each physical element of the offence attempted.

 

Example: A person approaches a service station carrying an item that can be used to threaten the person working at the till. Just before entering the building the person pulls the hood of their hoodie over their head. The person enters the building and announces his presence. If something happens that prevents the person from successfully rob the servo, the offence of "attempted armed robbery" has been committed.

 

For an offence to be a summary offence, the statute that creates the offence must clearly say that it can be dealt with summarily. If it does not, then the offence is an indictable offence. Indictable offences require a trial by judge and jury.

[old man emu]

59 minutes ago, jackc said:

Was it not called ‘Obtain money under false pretences’. ?

Basically the same offence as "Obtain benefit by deception". The title of the offence just varies beteeen jurisdictions. "Obtain benefit" simply widens the range of things that can be obtained.

[Bruce Tuncks]

There is, or should be, a crime of " demanding money with menaces ". That is how much govt money is got from the taxpayer.

In the case of this pilot, was he really ignorant of flying things or was he just not carrying the ( expensive ) bits of paper around?

Edited November 20, 2022 by Bruce Tuncks

[old man emu]

Yep. "Demand money with menaces" is an offence, however "menaces' means immediate threat of injury or death to the person being menaced, or to other persons in proximity to the person from whom money is being demanded. The offence must involve that threat of physical harm.  Demands for fees and taxes imposed by governments lack that element of physical harm. A wallet is an inanimate object that cannot fear harm.

[turboplanner]

21 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

What about taking responsibility for your own actions? I like this idea better than the alternative one of giving up your liberty.

Take vaxing as an example... what is wrong with refusing a vax and then catching the disease and dying?

In flying, I have never hurt anybody and don't plan to. What frightens me is being driven out by cost pressures caused by some lot who treat me like an idiot who needs a lot of ( paid for ) supervision.

"What about taking responsibility for your own actions" and "the Nanny State" are still espoused by  a few people, but most have moved on to understanding what duty of care is, even to the legal implications of duty of care to yourself."

 

Ironically for you, it was your State, South Australia, which kicked that into the past in the mid '80s with the deaths of two children in a Kindergarten.

 

South Australia also pioneered the responsibility for advice precedent where a woman pulled into a service station with a broken fan belt and the radiator blowing steam. the owner fished around for a belt for a while, then said he didn't have one, so advised her to drive to the other side of town because he knew that service station carried them.

 

She stook his advice, and halfway across town blew the motor.

 

The Judge ruled he had given wrongful advice because he should have added, "but if you do you will probably blow the motor."

 

They wouldn't be the exact words becaise it's from memory 30 years ago, but that's when most of us were updating our procedures and the way we did business.     

 

Society has moved from having the right to do what you want to having the right to live your life without someone ending it.

 

I still have the all-time record from SA to a town 19 km from yours in a Desoto on corrugated dirt, but I had to change, so why not you?

 

[old man emu]

16 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

In the case of this pilot, was he really ignorant of flying things or was he just not carrying the ( expensive ) bits of paper around?

On Day One of his pilot training he would have become aware of the need to have been issued with these "bits of paper". There is an offence of "fail to produce" which could be detected on a ramp check, but if an authorised person had a modicum of sense, they would deal with that offence with an Official Caution at best (if they could confirm the identity of the person they wished to deal with).

 

You would be surprised at the number of people who have years of (moving offence)-free driving yet have never been issued with a driver's licence.

 

One point I can agree with Bruce on is the ridiculous amounts governments charge for permissions to do things. I appreciate that there are costs involved in purchasing and maintaining the electronic devises used to store all the databases holding the information required for the task, but that cost is spread over a large population. I am about to renew the registration and CTP on one of my vehicles. It will be done on-line by sending a few kilobytes through the Internet. That will involve an expense of a few cents, or less.

[turboplanner]

38 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Attempt to commit an offence:

(1) A person who attempts to commit an offence is guilty of the offence of attempting to commit that offence and is punishable as if the offence attempted had been committed.

 

Thanks for that.

I have to convince some bros who adopted a name to get grant money that it's not a good idea to attampt to stitch up a further $3.5 billion.

Life wasn't meant to be easy.

[turboplanner]

14 minutes ago, old man emu said:

One point I can agree with Bruce on is the ridiculous amounts governments charge for permissions to do things. I appreciate that there are costs involved in purchasing and maintaining the electronic devises used to store all the databases holding the information required for the task, but that cost is spread over a large population. I am about to renew the registration and CTP on one of my vehicles. It will be done on-line by sending a few kilobytes through the Internet. That will involve an expense of a few cents, or less.

Yes, a lot of industries have failed to adapt and lower prices. Some of them have been wiped out by new business models.

One industry is newspapers where they originally had to write a story by placing little squares of font a letter at a time, checking for typos upside down in racks which would then be clamped and a test printed for further checks. If the stories didn't fit the page the letters had to be picked out and put in again until the page looked OK. You can imagine what cut and paste did for that industry, but they didn't lower the price of the papers.

Then huge presses had to be bought and amortised, and city newspapers would go hundreds of kilometres with semi trailers to pick up pib rolls of paper, then the presses would roll and papers would be loaded into dozens of trucks and raced out into the suburbs. The trucks carrying newspapers from Perth to Geraldton had to travel at night and had a selection of bull bar plus a new bar for every orifice a dead kangaroo had squeezed into, but they did it night after night. Then along came the internet and digital where it cost no more to send the news to Geraldton than it did to the next desk. Instead of adapting they sold subscriptions at the same price as newspapers........................

[old man emu]

Here's a copy of a 1948 Daily Telegraph from Sydney https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/27419876?

 

There's plenty of news to read in it.

 

Had to laugh at one thing. At the time the Federal Minister for Agriculture was a Mr Pollard. He was in dispute with the Wheat Board.

[Ian]

3 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Take vaxing as an example... what is wrong with refusing a vax and then catching the disease and dying?

What you've identified is not the issue with not vaccinating. I fully support people right not to vaccinate be it on the basis of a conspiracy theory, it being banned by the pixes at the bottom of the garden or on good scientific evidence.

 

However I don't support those people being able to participate in functions where they pose a risk to others such as healthcare, teaching, policing and interacting with the public on such things as RPT when there is a heightened risk of transmission as their belief system is putting others in danger. If the belief is based on good scientific evidence eventually logic will prevail however if it is because of the first two reasons, basically you're out of luck.

 

Read the story on Typhoid Mary to understand the risk a carrier can pose to others. I still find the final solution somewhat harsh but the reality was that it achieved a greater good as some estimates put the number of deaths caused by her at 50.

 

[Ian]

I think that the Government should have done the "Australia Card" properly as a smartcard and collapsed medicare, banking, drivers licences, pilots licences, building access, computing credentials and ASIC cards back into it.

I recently had to sign up to the ATOs mygovid as a company director as yet another form of identity but I can't make it subordinate to my mygov identity.

 

A central Gov id could have been voluntary allowing those who want to carry 50 different things around the option of doing so.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I agree Ian. Dependents of anti-vaxers pose a problem too. And just last week, we had a hellish problem with centerlink getting an identity so they would talk to us. The main problem turned out to be that the wife changed her name 55 years ago when we got married. That, and the way the software demanded capital letters some of the time but not all.

 

[spenaroo]

 

5 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

What about taking responsibility for your own actions? I like this idea better than the alternative one of giving up your liberty.

Take vaxing as an example... what is wrong with refusing a vax and then catching the disease and dying?

In flying, I have never hurt anybody and don't plan to. What frightens me is being driven out by cost pressures caused by some lot who treat me like an idiot who needs a lot of ( paid for ) supervision.

Thats all well and good, but its not reflected in current expectations.
It used to be that if someone did something stupid it was their own fault.
now its, if someone does something stupid why were they allowed to, why wasn't there signs/warning/safety ofiicers.

Death is not accepted in our society, any time there is a death its investigated, current safety systems checked. looking at if it could have been prevented.

We don't have personal responsibility anymore - everyone  is a victim and wants someone or something to blame. and this is the result.
more regulation

I give you the example of the young woman who stepped in front of the rollercoaster at the Melbourne show.
she had a history of poor choices, armed robbery,  a recovering ice addict who had just learnt to walk again after flipping her car on a freeway speeding while high.... 
who had gone against the instruction of ride operators to recover her phone.
but all that was in the media was poor victim, were the fences high enough, was the ride un-safe?

Edited November 21, 2022 by spenaroo

[spacesailor]

I Have a ' N S W photo identification card ' ,

But it still not good enough to get into a credit score checker .

most Officeous clerks, ' damand ' that photo drivers licence .

spacesailor

[kasper]

If readers are interested you can easily google "Queensland Criminal Code" and quite easily read through what Fraud is, that dishonesty on Fraud is indictable and that attempts = same as complete acts ... and its indicatable with max of many years in extended sleepover at taxpayers expense.

 

Always loved the fact that Qld and Tas codified their criminal laws WAY back ... made studying law in Tassie all those decades ago much easier than it was when I migrated north and started practice in NSW with dozens of pieces of legislation and case law to work through ... might explain why I decided tax and corp law was more to my strength.  

 

Don't get me wrong - Qld and Tas have multiple legislative instruments and case law built up around the Codes but that central core codification was always an easy starting point.

 

An on this case ... if they can prove that cash changed hands for non-legal cost share without an AOC (which on the reporting seems to be pretty well accepted given he has been reported to have been convicted) it looks like Mr Hoch is looking at an extended sleepover at tax payers expense.

 

Cheers.

[tillmanr]

Sentenced to a minimum of 2 years in jail today.

[facthunter]

The USERS got there  in the plane and our man incurred costs to achieve it. I believe a burgler can write off his jemmy and get away car. Tax Crimes have nabbed people like Al Capone when other ways failed.. Nev

[old man emu]

19 minutes ago, tillmanr said:

Sentenced to a minimum of 2 years in jail today.

Which is the punch line of the joke.

[spenaroo]

from one of tapped calls to his wife.

"no one is going to jail ... we say 'alright we've been naughty boys',"

Edited November 21, 2022 by spenaroo

[jackc]

Got off light…out in 12 months…

[onetrack]

And Hoch is probably unaware of how being given a jail sentence of 5 years for fraud and other offences (even though he only has to serve a minimum of 2 years) will impact on his life forever more.

 

For a start, he loses his right to vote while in jail. Second, he'll find that many doors which opened to him easily will now be shut. He will be quite likely refused entry to many countries as a result of having a criminal record.

He can't be a company director while in prison and he is disqualified from being a company director for 5 years as a result of a serious criminal conviction.

There will be a very adverse effect on his creditworthiness, which will make it harder for him to get loans and require him to pay more interest than he would otherwise.

All in all, a pretty stupid and ill-considered exercise.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-21/pilot-josh-hoch-sentenced-fraud-unlicensed-flights-bob-katter/101678316

[Bruce Tuncks]

I just read that hoch was a real criminal and he " poured contaminants into rivals plane's fuel tanks" to " cause engine failures".

 

If this is true, then he was indeed lucky to not get charged with attempted murder. I withdraw my support.

[Garfly]

On 19/11/2022 at 5:06 PM, Garfly said:

He had, though, been charged with far more serious offences in the past:

https://www.avweb.com/news/australian-pilot-accused-of-sabotaging-rivals-planes/

Those charges were eventually dropped, though, for lack of solid enough evidence.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-08/josh-hoch-supreme-court-charges-dropped-plane-sabotage/13226466

 

 

 

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Garfly