Sara Daizli: Glamorous banker life’s ‘destroyed’ by 120 fraud charges

A former bank employee’s life has been “devastated” by “completely false” allegations she defrauded multiple banks of hundreds of thousands of dollars, a court has heard.

Sara Daizli is alleged to have opened accounts under fictitious names between February 2016 and December 2018 to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from St George Bank customers.

Prosecutors say she funneled money into the bogus accounts and used the ill-gotten proceeds to fund an extravagant lifestyle.

The 32-year-old is also accused of submitting fraudulent loan applications to St George and ANZ banks.

She has pleaded not guilty to a whopping 120 charges, including dealing in the proceeds of crime and 108 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.

On Thursday, Daizli’s lawyer Abigail Bannister told the court her client’s life has been “ruined over the last four years” because of the “completely false” allegations of fraud.

Daizli is due to appear in the New South Wales District Court next month, but she was in court this week to discuss the summonses issued to Westpac Bank.

The court was told that Westpac, now the parent company of Daizli’s former employer St George Bank, spent countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars tracking down documents requested by the defence.

Westpac’s lawyer Andrew Byrne asked the court to quash parts of the subpoenas, arguing they were oppressive and an unlawful application of the legal process.

He said the bank had made “every effort” to provide the requested documents, but stressed the time and money it takes to sift through the “hundreds of millions of pieces of evidence.”

One of the documents Daizli’s lawyer is requesting concerns 19 days of staff login details, in which her client is accused of making fraudulent transfers.

Ms Bannister called it a “highly critical document” because prosecutors allege Daizli obtained the login details of several colleagues and used them 19 times to embezzle money.

She told the court that the bank’s policy stated that employees could be fired immediately if they shared their login details and were not even allowed to write them down.

Daizli should have obtained her colleague’s confidential login details and then monitored the employee from another room to ensure she was not logged in when she carried out the fraudulent transactions, Ms Bannister told the court.

She suggested that it was possible that St. George’s employees had made the transfers themselves, after someone entered the bank pretending to be someone else.

Sara Daizli is alleged to have opened accounts under fictitious names between February 2016 and December 2018 to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from St George Bank customers.

Ms Bannister said the scenario “leaves the door open” to the possibility that Daizli was also an innocent victim of an unknown fraudster who tricked her into opening fake accounts.

“It’s critical for us to see the credentials,” she said.

However, Mr Byrne argued that it would take an “extremely long time” to carry out the necessary searches of Westpac’s extensive data as it is not a “straightforward process”.

Judge Nanette Williams ordered Westpac to take “all reasonable steps” to produce the login details.

However, she rejected a request for a chronological overview of transactions carried out by bank employees on the same days, saying it was “far too extensive”.

Ms Bannister also asked for a list of the best performing employees at St George Bank during Daizli’s three-year tenure as a customer service specialist.

Judge Williams ordered Westpac to produce the documents by August 19. He rejected Ms Bannister’s argument that eight weeks had passed since Westpac first said it would take 10 days to produce the documents.

“I don’t care, Ms. Bannister. I want the material to you as soon as possible,” the judge said.

The 32-year-old (pictured Thursday) is also accused of submitting fraudulent loan applications to St George and ANZ banks

Other defense requests, such as copies of investigators’ interviews with staff members in connection with the fraud, were denied by Judge Williams as too broad.

She ordered the parties to return to court on August 19 so that Westpac could report on its progress in producing the approved documents.

“This trial will not be disrupted by the subpoena issues,” the judge stated.

“It’s going to happen in September.”

Daizli has been released on bail with strict conditions, including a $1,050,000 surety so she can appear in court if necessary.

She is also facing civil proceedings brought by Westpac Bank in connection with her alleged fraud.