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Audit This · Tuesday · 31 min

Free Because It Should Be

Go and find your last payslip. There is a line on it you have almost certainly never checked. It says tax. Between 2014 and 2017 a payroll company in Sydney collected $141,291,923 in tax withheld from ordinary workers' pay. It kept $105,625,304 of it. Plutus Payroll advertised itself as free. It was free because the fee came out of the tax. Every worker got a payslip saying the tax had been paid. Fifteen people were sentenced. As at the date of this recording, the convictions of all five men at the centre of it stand. Dev Menon and Jason Onley have filed appeals against their convictions, and no appeal has been determined. This is also an episode about a gap in the law that a court had already described, in writing, eleven years before anybody walked through it. Built entirely from the public record. New episodes weekly. CHAPTERS 00:00 The payslip said the tax had been paid 01:12 1989: a bricklayer, and the gap a court described 04:08 The pitch, and a joke about tax that is 2,400 years old 06:06 The men who ran it 09:08 How the machine actually worked 12:14 "Lovely" 14:07 What the money bought 16:15 The room was wired 18:09 The blackmail 21:41 Squeaky clean 24:32 The ledger: fifteen sentences 28:06 The register, and what changed SOURCES R v Cranston [2023] NSWSC 1004 R v Cranston [2023] NSWSC 1008 R v Lauren Cranston [2023] NSWSC 454 R v Cranston (No 9) [2021] NSWSC 1413 R v Cranston (No 31) [2023] NSWSC 488 Menon v R; Onley v R [2025] NSWCCA 56 Anquetil v R [2025] NSWCCA 147 In the matter of Plutus Payroll Australia Pty Ltd [2019] NSWSC 1171 R v Walters [2001] NSWSC 640 R v Walters [2002] NSWCCA 291 R v Iannelli [2003] NSWCCA 1; (2003) 56 NSWLR 247 Australian National Audit Office, Report 32 of 2018-19 Australian National Audit Office, Report 15 of 2023-24 PwC for the Fair Work Ombudsman, June 2012 Senate Economics References Committee, "I just want to be paid", December 2015 Melbourne Law School and Monash University, February 2017 Australian Business Registry Services, Registrar statement, 30 November 2022 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force, employees plutuspayroll.com, techpilotfund.com.au and synep.com, archived captures, Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 2014 to 2018 If this episode has raised anything for you, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is on 1300 22 4636. Audit This takes one Australian fraud and follows the money to the end of it. Audit This takes one story at a time and follows it to the end. Every episode is built from the public record: court transcripts, sentencing remarks, corruption commission findings, Hansard and auditor general reports. No speculation. No dramatisation. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Audit_This Corrections and tip-offs: auditthismedia@gmail.com

0:00-31:14
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transcript

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show notes

Go and find your last payslip. There is a line on it you have almost certainly never checked. It says tax.

Between 2014 and 2017 a payroll company in Sydney collected $141,291,923 in tax withheld from ordinary workers' pay. It kept $105,625,304 of it.

Plutus Payroll advertised itself as free. It was free because the fee came out of the tax. Every worker got a payslip saying the tax had been paid.

Fifteen people were sentenced. As at the date of this recording, the convictions of all five men at the centre of it stand. Dev Menon and Jason Onley have filed appeals against their convictions, and no appeal has been determined.

This is also an episode about a gap in the law that a court had already described, in writing, eleven years before anybody walked through it.

Built entirely from the public record.

New episodes weekly.

CHAPTERS
00:00 The payslip said the tax had been paid
01:12 1989: a bricklayer, and the gap a court described
04:08 The pitch, and a joke about tax that is 2,400 years old
06:06 The men who ran it
09:08 How the machine actually worked
12:14 "Lovely"
14:07 What the money bought
16:15 The room was wired
18:09 The blackmail
21:41 Squeaky clean
24:32 The ledger: fifteen sentences
28:06 The register, and what changed

SOURCES
R v Cranston [2023] NSWSC 1004
R v Cranston [2023] NSWSC 1008
R v Lauren Cranston [2023] NSWSC 454
R v Cranston (No 9) [2021] NSWSC 1413
R v Cranston (No 31) [2023] NSWSC 488
Menon v R; Onley v R [2025] NSWCCA 56
Anquetil v R [2025] NSWCCA 147
In the matter of Plutus Payroll Australia Pty Ltd [2019] NSWSC 1171
R v Walters [2001] NSWSC 640
R v Walters [2002] NSWCCA 291
R v Iannelli [2003] NSWCCA 1; (2003) 56 NSWLR 247
Australian National Audit Office, Report 32 of 2018-19
Australian National Audit Office, Report 15 of 2023-24
PwC for the Fair Work Ombudsman, June 2012
Senate Economics References Committee, "I just want to be paid", December 2015
Melbourne Law School and Monash University, February 2017
Australian Business Registry Services, Registrar statement, 30 November 2022
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force, employees
plutuspayroll.com, techpilotfund.com.au and synep.com, archived captures, Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 2014 to 2018

If this episode has raised anything for you, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is on 1300 22 4636.

Audit This takes one Australian fraud and follows the money to the end of it.

Audit This takes one story at a time and follows it to the end.

Every episode is built from the public record: court transcripts, sentencing remarks, corruption commission findings, Hansard and auditor general reports. No speculation. No dramatisation.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Audit_This
Corrections and tip-offs: auditthismedia@gmail.com

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