Second Child of Former ATO Deputy Commissioner Found Guilty In $105 Million Tax Fraud

The daughter of a former deputy commissioner of the ATO has been found guilty over her role in a $105 million tax-fraud scheme.

Lauren Cranston was found guilty of conspiring to cause a loss to the Commonwealth and conspiring to deal with the proceeds of crime in connection to the Plutus Payroll scandal on Monday.

She began sobbing as the result was announced in the NSW Supreme Court.

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This comes just one week after the jury returned guilty verdicts for her brother Adam Cranston and co-accused Dev Menon and Jason Onley.

The Cranston siblings are amongst five people who have been tried for the fraudulent scheme, with a verdict pending for the fifth defendant, Patrick Wilmott.

The prosecution argued that the accused parties used a legitimate payroll company called Plutus Payroll to collect gross wages from employers before siphoning off more than $100 million in GST and Pay As You Go (PAYG) tax into "second tier" companies.

It was alleged that random, unconnected and sometimes vulnerable parties were installed as directors of those companies to distance the defendants from the fraud.

The fraudulently obtained money funded lavish lifestyles including cars, planes and real estate.

The trial, which began last April, heard hundreds of recorded conversations, including one from April 2017 in which Adam Cranston said to co-defendant Dev Menon that if the fraud was uncovered, "It would be f****n’ Ben Hur man.”

Menon replied: "It would be the biggest tax fraud in Australia’s history, definitely, there is no question.”

The alleged multi-million-dollar scam was uncovered by the Australian Federal Police with assistance from the ATO in 2017 as part of Operation Elbrus.

There is no suggestion that Lauren and Adam Cranston's father, Michael Cranston, was involved in wrongdoing.

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