Former Carlton and Port Adelaide player Nick Stevens has been accused of deceptively charging families tens of thousands of dollars for pools they never received.
The 45-year-old is facing 18 fraud-related charges, including obtaining a financial advantage through deception, after allegedly accepting $170,000 from six families to deliver and install swimming pools at properties in the Mildura region.
Prosecutor Toni Stokes told the County Court of Victoria in Melbourne the families were left with either “[not permitted] pools, giant holes in their backyards, or nothing at all”.
Mr Stevens has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
On Wednesday, Mildura Rural City Council municipal building surveyor Mark Yanstes told the court Mr Stevens called the council in January 2018 to ask if he needed a permit to install swimming pools, after accepting money from several clients.
The court heard Mr Yantses told him: “Every pool in Victoria needs a building permit.”
The case is being heard in the County Court of Victoria. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)
The court heard the council’s building surveyors came across several jobs in 2017 and 2018 where home owners had signed an application for building permits, believing they had done the right thing and followed council rules.
It was alleged these applications for building permits were linked to a company run by a private building surveyor, but that the surveyor had not received the paperwork before the jobs began.
Deputy municipal building surveyor Richard Rowe told the court the council was forced to shut down several of Mr Stevens’s work sites.
He said pool permits could not be issued retrospectively, so families had to either demolish the pools or leave them as-is, even if they were half-finished.
The court heard that at least one family told Mr Stevens to have their pool removed.
‘Every week … another delay’
Mildura man Ben Knight told the court he paid Mr Stevens more than $30,000 for a pool he never got.
He said Mr Stevens gave a plethora of excuses for why he could not install the pool, including bad weather.
“Every week there was another delay … until late in January when it all finished up,” Mr Knight told the court.
“One reason was it had rained too much, it was too wet; one was that the truck that delivers the pool had broken down; there was ongoing legal battles with Leisure Pools.
“Just about anything you could think of.”
Mr Knight told the court Mr Stevens gave him a $10,000 refund in February 2018.
“I did text Nick after that and asked for the rest of the outstanding balance … there was no answer, so I knew the writing was on the wall,” he said.
Nick Stevens is facing nine charges, including obtaining a financial advantage through deception. (AAP: Tracey Nearmy)
A ‘technical’ case
In her opening argument, Ms Stokes told the court Mr Stevens was running a landscaping business in the Mildura area at the time of the alleged offending in 2017 and 2018.
She said Mr Stevens was in a dealership agreement with a company called Leisure Pools.
The deal was for Leisure Pools to supply the pools, and Mr Stevens was meant to install them, the court heard.
In his opening address, defence barrister Jim Stavris told the jury it would “in some ways be a technical case”, urging them to pay attention to the chronology and dates in the evidence from witnesses in the trial.
The trial before Judge Fran Dalziel continues.
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