County Court judge Gavan Meredith has ruled on the controversial case of an ex-banker who defrauded $3.75 million from Commonwealth Bank spent on women, cocaine and alcohol.

Greek Australian George Vrettakos who abused his role as a mobile lender between 2008 and 2009 was discovered by the bank’s management in 2010, however, it took Commonwealth nearly 10 years to report his scam.

Vrettakos, admitted to falsifying documents and to creating three lines of credit using made-up names committed 130 fraudulent transactions to gain $1.48 million.

The bank kept silent, revealing the fraud in and making a police report no sooner than 2018 and only following a report by The Age. The bank, which had known about the fraud since 2010 when a client questioned an error concerning a property title, has allegedly kept silent due to Vrettakos revealing there were more staff members involved and over 100 witnesses.

“We had beautiful lunches. We had beautiful wines. We snorted coke – a lot of it. We met a lot of girls. That’s what I got out of it. Stupid,” Vrettakos told the Court.

“There were witnesses to stuff that was done, stuff that was consumed, stuff that was being drunk, stuff that was being snorted”.

The bank let the banker go and regained $695,000 through civil action. It is worth noting that none of the bank’s customers lost any funds due to Vrettakos’ actions.

As a result and according to Judge Meredith’s ruling, 41-year-old Vrettakos was spared immediate imprisonment and his three-year sentence has been wholly suspended for three years due to significant delays in him being brought to justice, all of which were beyond his control.

The suspension of the jail term means that Vrettakos will not go into custody unless he breaches the court order by offending again.

“It is apparent that the delay in your case has been inordinate,” Judge Meredith said adding that “white-collar crimes involved calculating, well-disguised offending was deserving of denunciation”.

In this case, which was dubbed “unique” the Judge noted the offender’s remorse, his rehabilitation over the past decade and that he had been anxious at having the potential of jail hanging over him.

Meanwhile, the offender has been insisting that he defrauded his employer due to extreme pressure at work and needing to repay a $150,000 debt over a failed business venture at the same time his wife was dealing with a serious health problem.

According to his family, he has completely changed following his engagement nine years ago and his behaviour has been impeccable since.

Vrettakos has not made further comments or responded to Neos Kosmos‘ question but as the trajectory of the case is raising even more questions, our newspaper will be closely following.