iscover Lawyer penalised for role in Plutus Payroll blackmail plot
TaxThe NSW Supreme Court has kicked a lawyer out of the profession over his role in a $25 million blackmail scheme against the conspirators behind a major ATO scam.
Having found there was “no doubt” Sevag Chalabian was unfit to ever again practise as a lawyer, Supreme Court of NSW’s Justice Julie Ward, Justice Kristina Stern and Acting Justice Derek Price ordered his name be removed from the roll of practitioners.
In June 2022, Chalabian was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment, with a seven-and-a-half-year non-parole period, for laundering just under $25 million through the trust account of his firm, Lands Legal.
The money was linked to a blackmail plot concocted by Comanchero associate Daniel Rostankovski – along with Daniel Hausman and Stephen Barrett – against the conspirators behind the Plutus Payroll scheme to defraud the ATO.
On Rostankovski and Hausman’s instructions, Chalabian washed 53 deposits through the trust account and created a false paper trail.
He received just over $51,500 for his role in the plot.
“The serious nature of the respondent’s criminal conduct, which involved violation of the sanctity of the trust accounts of his firm and the creation of sham documents, makes inevitable the conclusion that the respondent is unfit to practise as a lawyer, as the respondent himself concedes,” Justices Ward, Stern and Price determined.
The Plutus scheme operated on the collection of gross wages that were laundered through second-tier companies rather than being paid to the ATO for goods and services tax (GST) and pay as you go (PAYG).
It was run by Adam and Lauren Cranston – children of former ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston, who was not linked to the conspiracy – former athlete Jason Onley, Patrick Wilmont, and now-deceased Peter Larcombe. Lawyer Dev Menon eventually joined.
Convictions and heavy jail sentences have been handed out to all the key players for taking more than $105 million from legitimate clients who were attracted to the promise of a fee-free taxation service.
Rostankovski was brought in to recruit straw directors for the second-tier companies, but turned on them in February 2017 with threats to expose the Plutus scheme to media and the authorities.
The blackmail money was collected over a 12-week period.
Justices Ward, Stern and Price said it was likely Chalabian would be unfit to practise for the “indefinite future”, particularly given he is incarcerated and has not suggested any safeguards for his practice.
“In all the circumstances, including the deliberate and intentional nature of the serious wrongdoing, it is appropriate that an order by made for the removal of the respondent’s name from the roll,” the bench concluded.
The case: The Council of the Law Society of New South Wales v Chalabian [2025] NSWCA 255.
