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Leslie Matthew Cheers

 COURT OF APPEAL

[1997] QCA 329

MACROSSAN CJ McPHERSON JA de JERSEY J

CA No 214 of 1997 
THE QUEEN 
v.

Leslie Matthew Cheers

Applicant

BRISBANE 
..DATE 26/08/97 
260897 T17/HMH8 M/T COA19/97 
de JERSEY J: The applicant is a 54-year-old man who has sought 
leave to appeal against an effective sentence for offences of 
dishonesty of seven years with parole recommended after two and 
a half years. He pleaded guilty to the charges which explains 
in part the parole recommendation. The head sentence is partly 
referable to his prior criminal history, convictions for other 
dishonesty which had led to three years probation and, of 
course, to the circumstances of the particular offences.

 

The charges were spread over two indictments. The first contained a count of misappropriation with a circumstance of aggravation for which he was imprisoned for six years, seven counts of false pretences each of which attracted three years imprisonment, 11 counts of forgery with a circumstance of aggravation for which he imprisoned for seven years, and another seven counts of uttering with a circumstance of aggravation which attracted seven years.

A second indictment presented ex officio charged 31 counts of passing valueless cheques for which he was imprisoned for two years and eight counts of false pretences for which terms of three years were imposed. All of the sentences were to be served concurrently with an overall recommendation for release after two-and-a-half years.

The offences arose in these circumstances. The applicant in August 1992 approached one Wilson with a proposal to build 28 units. Mr Wilson was to provide the finance and the applicant to act as site supervisor. They were to share the profits equally after Mr Wilson recovered his $500,000 outlay for the 260897 T17/HMH8 M/T COA19/97

Purchase of the land.

The building commenced in March 1993 and Mr Wilson was the authorised signatory for cheques to pay for services and materials. The applicant provided certified copies of invoices and, acting on that certification, Mr Wilson would provide him with a cheque for payment for the invoice on the basis that he would then pass the cheque on to the provider of the goods and services.

As an example of what happened, on 17 March 1993 Mr Wilson was given a photocopy of an invoice from Why Wait Plumbing for $7,954.30 and wrote out a cheque for that amount. The invoice was false, no materials had been provided. The applicant went to his solicitor's office with the cheque which had a forged endorsement for the applicant's company. The applicant asked the solicitor to clear the cheque through his trust account because he said he did not have a banking account. The cheque was cleared and the applicant received a bank cheque.

On 8 April 1993 the applicant gave Mr Wilson an invoice from M L M Cartage for $2,342.50 and received a cheque from him in return. That invoice in fact related to work done at another site in which the applicant had an interest. Using the same procedure, he obtained a bank cheque from the solicitor. This was the general pattern relating to these offences, although there were variants. In the end, $41,790.78 was lost to the victims of these offences of dishonesty.

The second indictment related to a period August 1992 to May 
260897 T17/HMH8 M/T COA19/97 
1994 during which the applicant conducted 39 transactions on 
cheque accounts with six different financial institutions. The 
cheques were used to obtain goods and services which he used in 
his building enterprises or for goods and services used in fish 
and chips shops he conducted or to pay debts relating to his 
building enterprises. None of the cheques was met on 
presentation and the suppliers have never been paid. The total 
amount outstanding in respect of that indictment is $131,535.59 
so that the aggregate loss is $173,326.37.

There are two other features which bear mention relating to the applicant. The first is that he was an undischarged bankrupt throughout these periods. The second is that the offences committed after 1 September 1993 in respect of the second indictment occurred while he was on bail.

He pleaded guilty, although the plea in relation to the first indictment came only on the morning set for the trial. The sentencing was thereafter adjourned twice in the hope that some restitution could be arranged. It was first adjourned on 17 October 1996 until 17 April 1997, and then later from 17 April 1997 to 2 May 1997. Neither adjournment produced any financial relief for the victims so that that total amount remains outstanding.

Counsel for the Crown properly points out that the offences were serious and that they involved a deliberate and systematic course of dishonest conduct for almost two years involving 65 separate transactions. In all of these circumstances, a sentence of seven years with consideration for parole 260897 T17/HMH8 M/T COA19/97 recommended after two-and-a-half could not be described as manifestly excessive. The two cases to which we have been referred, Taylor, CA406 of 1994, and Keogh, CA408 of 1994, in each of which the ultimate sentence imposed was the same as here, provide ample support for the sentence which was imposed here, the circumstances of those particular cases being roughly comparable.

The applicant sought an adjournment of the hearing of this application and the circumstances which led the Court to decline to adjourn will appear sufficiently from the transcript of what has preceded this judgment this morning. When asked to argue the merits of his application, he referred only to a future possibility of restitution. The vagueness of that, accepting for argument's sake its relevance, is of course reminiscent of the vagueness apparently of prospects of restitution when raised before the learned sentencing Judge on the occasions which led to the adjournment of the sentencing process from 17 October 1996 ultimately to 2 May 1997. I would refuse the application.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE: I agree.

McPHERSON JA: I agree.

More about his more recent and current activities:

     

And as we all know, the apple never falls far from the tree, particularly a bad apple. We now also know that Cheers' own son Robin Wickham (below right) is also a scammer. He is listed as a major shareholder in Forsythe Manufacturing.
 
Read about Cheers, Keith Kelly, and Jim Bogoevski, along with "Sir" John Foley, and the scamming of two elderly women here.

        
Keith Kelly, a partner of Cheers, has defaulted on a property repayment schedule. He and Cheers did a deal for the purchase of a property, the terms of which were some cash and shares in one of Kelly's companies. One only scheduled cash payment was made, and Kelly won't respond to contacts made chasing payments. More on this soon.

Cheer's history:
1. Luxury cars on finance delinquency list.
It has come to our notice that BMW Finance has been trying to collect payment arreas for about six prestige cars under the control of Les Cheers, who again has been calling himself John Alexander. The cars are under finance in the name of  Forsythe Global Marketing Pty Ltd.  Forsyth Global Marketing Pty Ltd directors are Brett John Mills, Keith Kelly, Raquel Hirvonen. Mills is secretary. Both Mills and Raquel Hirvonen are guarantors for the car finance contracts. There have been bounced bank cheques involved in these matters.

2. Forsythe Manufacturing Pty Ltd.
This company is the re-incarnation of several former companies: Eghl Recycling and Skips Pty Ltd, Linkenbrook Pty Ltd, The Australian Pie Shop Pty Ltd and Tealcorp Pty Ltd.
The secretary and sole director is one Keith Kelly of 6 Kelsey Circuit, Nerang QLD 4211, just around the corner from 142 Eastlake Street Nerang, the HQ for Forsyth Global Marketing menioned above, which ASIC also records is the registered address for this mob.
The company set up an elaborate scam to fraudulently obtain a QLD dairy farm using collateral that did not belong to them. We have all the details including the draft share sale agreement. see below
It is clear from his behaviour and contacts he has made with numerous victims,  that Les Cheers calls the shots for these companies and is in fact the so-called brains behind them, but nowhere does he ever appear on any official documents of any registered companies. He has signed contracts under his Alexander name, and he often uses other people as office holders, is a convincing and plausable liar, and doesn't care who he cons.
Claims made by Cheers include him being a buyer of dairy manufacturing businesses and farmland developments. All his efforts to weasel shares or money out of other busineses appear to have failed thus far but he persists. We have had contacts from five such businesses each of whom have had sad experiences with Cheers and his cohorts.

This liar even had the cheek to claim that he had a controlling interest in dairy giant Murray Goulburn in an attempt to leverage their assets as collateral for another scam.


Cheers Rips off yet another elderly defenceless lady:
JA, how's poor old Ruth going after losing some $2m in one of your scams? (Ruth Rothery is 89 years old, but he still swindled her)

We also know he ripped off another elderly woman, Eleanor Whight, a friend of Ruth's and about the same age. An email from her is pasted further below.
Meantime, he agreed through a contact of ours, to commence repayments to Ruth of $10,000 per month. The first mayment was due in late January, but he has been stalling week after week and still not started. One earlier promise was that he would make the first installment Wednesday February 19,2020. But he turned up to meet our contact and provided nothing but a supposed bank statement which showed one uncleared cheque. He stated that he had asked for a special clearance on that cheque. Given that we already know he has previously produce phoney bank cheques, we reckon that the statement was a forgery also.
Email from Eleanor Whight:
"He (M) phoned me one day to say that he and Joan had to move out of the container in which they were living on his sister'place as one of her kids needed to move back there, and would they be able to come and live in my old Dairy. He was aware that it had been rebuild years earlier as a 3 bedroom cottage instead of being an 8 bail milking shed, but was still very basic. At that stage, the plans that Ruth, John Foley and M for my flats in Dornoch Terrace had gone up in smoke, thanks to John (Foley) and all his lies to both Ruth and me. The bank had repossessed and sold the place. Another long saga. John and M had taken R's co and renamed it Rutlin P/L. She deposited some $240K into a new bank account in the Co name but B O Q. refused to allow Rutlin to take over the debt.

Anyway I said I would be pleased to have them come and live here as permanent tenants but only if Joan could handle country living and if M helped with renovating it again as the white ants had had a field day and I had started from floor up to rebuild it. I had knocked out walls, dug up the floor and reconcreted it, relined the ceiling, put in solar panels etc. but he would have to cover his share of rates and maintenance. They were there next day and said yes please. He was to help on the farm as well as get all the legal work done so I owned the farm and it was unemcumbered.

He came up a week later with a double bed, fridge, small chest and some clothes and we stored them in a container. Then a couple of weeks later he rang late one Friday night with the story about Les, Keith, and Forsythe, and how they could cover all my debts from Arab $ if i would allow them to take out a 2nd mortgage so they could pay out a creditor of Forsythe. Enter Jim and Dale.
I think you know the rest of that story, but Joan was put into a nursing home, M went ????????????? to live, perhaps with "Blondie".
Neither M nor Joan ever moved up here, but he certainly conned me. He did do up an agreement for me to sign to say that he "owned" the miking shed and initially it was 30mt around it. I had words about that so he changed it to the land around it, no good to me. He kept resending new versions saying that he owned the shed which I kept refuting till eventually he arrived one day with Joan in tow trying to insist that I sign his agreement, which Joan was to witness. He went away empty handed but insisted I had signed. After months of my asking for a copy of that agreement, I got one with my name "signed" in very small writing, similar to my signature but not mine. It was on that document that he took out the Caveat only to have it thown out by D N R as he did not return the required docs to DNR in the required time, probably because he knew that it was a forgery and would not stand up in court. He and Andrea just turned up one day, when he handed me papers claiming that I owed him$1.5m, and he took his fridge and clothes with him but left the small chest and some linen which had got wet, ha ha ha. He was also told to leave that day by my cattle partner (The C I B cop) he fronted him and told him he couldn't tell him what to do, and only a cop could tell him what to do. Woopsie,  on being told again to leave,  Karl offered his rank and serial no so M rethought his options and left rather promptly, Andrea drove quite quickly out the gate. So anyway, he does not, never will, nor does his mum live out here. 

The caveat had an email address on it which when my solicitor checked up on it was registered to someone in San Francisco. USA. I later came across some information which has led me to believe that he is actually registered in Australia,  as "M" a false identity. His pension card is in the name of Michael Douglas.

He often insists that he paid a large sum of $ into a BOQ account, of course he didn't, and yes we opened a bank account in the name of a company that "was given to us by Les"(Les Cheers).  I paid in a small sum to make it patent but he has since withdrawn that and I have contacted ASIC and resigned as a Co Director and office bearer. So for what it is worth, he has cost me about $3m in losses of property, plus my sanity and relationship with each of my 3 children and their families etc etc plus all the legal issues.
I called a meeting with all those involved with Forsythe (Owned by Les Cheers and Keith Kelly), held down the coast and asked Dale to have the Caveats lifted off all my properties and allow me to get on with selling those places and relieve me of all debt. I believe Ray you asked the same of him, which he did, not M, but it was too late then for me to unburden the places myself and the banks got them."

Another connected entity, which concerned people have enquired, about is Warrior Capital Pty Ltd, also of 142 Eastlake Street Nerang.

List of persons associated with Les Cheers, aka John Alexander, or have shares in Forsythe:
                                                                    
Here's an extract from some information we recently received.                                                                    

Hi Guys
John Alexander (Les Cheers) is the principal shareholder of this company that manufacturing cheese and ice cream.
He wants to buys the shares in my client’s company (sanitised) for $5.6m - $3.8m in cash and $1.8m in shares in his company.
The problem is:

1. The cheese making and retail facility is not owned by his company at all, and the owner is upset that John is purporting to own it
2. The ice cream making plant in Melbourne has been vacant for 12 months according to the neighbours
3. Basically this means that the assets are not there and the financials are rubbish.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Updated: September 22, 2017
   

                                                                   

 2012: Les Cheers  is a convicted fraudster who was sentenced to seven years jail for for dishonesty in the nineties. He has an extensive criminal record going into the last decade, and is now working with Peter Liva in trying to obtain fees in advance from would-be borrowers through PL Securities. See criminal history citation below.  We have further criminal history available relating to his activities involving unlicenced home constructions, deposits taken on land acquisition, forged documentation and signatures, and some downright callous predation on one insuspecting and trusting woman that he met through an introduction agency. Readers wanting to see trial transcripts should contact us and we will forward them. These are lengthy documents too large to paste here. Companies (now defunct) he has been in control of are Devcon, Orchid Homes, Snowlake, Anivor, Flamekey and Whywait.

He and Peter Liva (see below) are also working closely with a Richard Goodfellow and others we will name in this scam. He has been posing as a representative of victims in numerous contacts with Wikifrauds relating to the Peter Liva and Facultus scam. "Alexander's" email address ccwligistics@gmail.com

We also know that he and Richard Goodfellow organised the registration of Liva's PL Securities for Liva, and were using this front company to raise fees for Liva, and that in turn it was Liva's solicitor Graeme Delaney who introduced Goodfellow to Liva!

Alexander twice "passed" on threats to us in the last few months that he would be unable to control an "exitable, arm waiving Greek or Italian type character" from Sydney who would "deal with us" if we published the Facultus and Liva matter, which we have now done. He has also claimed to have a "heavy" in Sydney who would take care of anyone else who exposed Liva. These matters have already been advised to the Australian Federal Police and the NSW Police.

Update Nov 27 2012: This scumbag is still actively trying to borrow money and promising to repay from funds he alleges his accomplice Peter Liva now has. Under no circumstances should anyone lend this conman as much as a cigarette! Any attempts by him to borrow money or obtain fees for business dealings should be reported to the Fraud and Corporate Crime Group at Brisbane Police ( 07 3364 4125), or by contacting us.

Criminal Associate: Walter Frymml's name appears as a fellow director of many companies run by Alexander. It appears he has his own fraud history as disclosed by a news article in Gold Coast dot com

Also disclosed in a series of ASIC documents on Cheers' numerous companies are continued directorships and shareholdings of Judith Helen Wickham, Robin Noel Wickham, and Anitta Waterhouse. Waterhouse is well known and dubiuos deal spruiker on the Gold Coast.
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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Associate: "Dr" Peter (Pierino) Liva, QLD Australia. (Currently in Brussels)

Pierino John Liva, or "Dr" Peter Liva as he prefers to be known as, is a cheap fraudster from Australia with a long and very bad credit history. We have a list of around twenty or so people from whom he and his former company Facultus Pty Ltd, has snaffled somewhere between $2M and $3M over the last two years, using fake documents to con unwitting people with his scam plot. He is currently (as of October) still in Brussels staying at the Novatel - on other people's money we might add. Now he's trying it all over again with this new company PL Securities, and we have the documents to prove it. More details coming soon.

Credit History:       Obtained from Veda Advantage as results of a Multi-Power Express search on Facultus Pty Ltd.

Pierino John Liva,   D.O.B. 31 October, 1966, Werribee Victoria.
                                 Current Address: 12 Winterhaven Key, Broadbeach Waters QLD 4218  (The Gold Coast)

Court Judgements:  19/4/2011 Creditor  SOVEREIGN PROPERTIES PTY LTD                               Magistrates Court Judgement  $7015
                                  24/6/2008 Creditor TOWNHOUSE REMOVALS AND STORAGE PTY LTD  Local Court Judgement             $1674
                                  26/3/2007 Creditor  CHRISTOPHER MARK STANLEY                                    Local Court Judgement             $4789
                                  23/2/2007 Creditor  UNIQUE LOANS PTY LTD                                                  Local Court Judgement             $9380
Facultus Pty Ltd
Court Judgement:  24/8/2011  Creditor  SENSIS PTY LTD                                                                   Magistrates Court Judgement  $36327
Court Action          - Current    Creditor CHRISTOPHER JOHN CLARKE                                        Supreme Court Victoria            $43000
                                  Facultus Pty Ltd ordered into liquidation. Action not defended by Liva.
Business History
                                Start: Mar 1987        Director                      Talia Property Investment Pty Ltd                 Deregistered Sep   1987
                                Start: April 1988       Director/Secretary      Multilec Services Pty Ltd                               Derigistered   Jun   1993
                                Start: May 1996       Director/Secretary      Livacomp Pty Ltd                                            Deregistered  Mar  2004
                                Start: Aug  1987       Director/Secretary      Cantala Pty Ltd                                                Deregistered  Dec  1992
                                Start: Jun  1997        Director/Secretary      Brewco Holdings Pty Ltd                                Deregistered  Jun   1998
                                Start: Mar 1987        Director                       Bromac Investments Pty Ltd                          Deregistered  Sep  1997
                                Start: Jun 2000         Director/Secretary      Premier Focus Pty Ltd                                     Deregistered  Dec  2005
                                Start: Jan 2004         Director/Secretary      Corplink Services Pty Ltd                               Deregistered  Jul    2007
                                Start: May 2002       Sales Consultant          ANM Curtains

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