Athena Razos has wreaked financial havoc for more than three decades, using more than a dozen aliases to defraud, embezzle and steal from prestigious law firms, major banks and her first husband.
On Friday morning, the disgraced paralegal was jailed for embezzling almost $1.6 million from Melbourne law firm Moray and Agnew after carrying out more than 100 fraudulent transactions between 2013 and 2017.
Athena Razos has been sentenced to more than five years in jail after embezzling more than $1.5 million from her employer over several years.Credit: Facebook
Victorian County Court judge John Kelly sentenced Razos, 59, to five years and three months in jail, with a minimum non-parole period of two years and nine months.
“Your fall from grace has been complete,” Kelly said. “Your offending needs to be condemned.”
Sitting in the back of the courtroom watching it unfold was Rhonda Taylor, who had waited more than two decades for justice after her life was cruelly upended by the inveterate conwoman.
In 2003, Taylor, a beautician, lent $46,000 to Razos, who was using the alias Athena Bouzas. As they sat in a Melbourne cafe, Razos, who had met Taylor through one of her beauty clients, tearfully told her she needed the money to invest in a cosmetics business.
Rhonda Taylor waited more than two decades for justice after her life was upended by conwoman Athena Razos.Credit: Paul Jeffers
The disqualified paralegal clerk also claimed she had fallen behind on mortgage repayments, promising to settle the debt with Taylor as soon as she could refinance the property.
But she never saw her money again. After Razos reneged on her, Taylor, a single mother raising triplets, was eventually forced to sell her own home in Kew.
Taylor’s three boys are now grown up. But she has never forgotten the betrayal.
The 69-year-old has attended court 15 times since Razos first appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in March 2022, pleading guilty to 16 charges and misappropriating more than $1.56 million from clients of Moray and Agnew.
The case was repeatedly adjourned because Razos told the court her mental health deteriorated.
On Friday, Taylor stared intently at Razos as she appeared via a video-link from prison. Razos kept her head bowed for most of the sentencing hearing, while Taylor scrawled down the judge’s sentencing remarks in a notepad.
When the jail sentence was handed down, Razos remained stony faced, her hair pulled back in a loose bun, and eyes unflinching, as she stared straight ahead.
Kelly said there had been tragic implications for the victims of Razos’ crimes and her conduct had been “protracted, vicious and deeply exploitative”.
“I’ve waited almost 22 years for justice. I was obviously hoping for more because she’s a serial con-artist who has managed to continually manipulate the system,” Taylor, who is writing a book documenting Razos’ crimes, said outside court.
“There’s a part of her that doesn’t feel what she’s doing is wrong, and I don’t think she’ll ever change. She’d steal her grandmother’s false teeth and sell them.”
Court documents show Razos had repeatedly siphoned money from client trust accounts into her private bank accounts between 2013 and 2017, while working at Moray and Agnew’s Little Collins Street offices.
She used the proceeds to pay stamp duty of $55,000 on the purchase of a property in Box Hill South for $1 million in 2016. She then paid a construction company with stolen funds to build a luxury townhouse on the block, which later sold for $2,210,888.
In 2000, Razos also pleaded guilty to 20 theft and fraud offences she committed using the name Tina Zissiadis-Ligris, including submitting fake documents to obtain a Diners Club card, before racking up debts of $80,000.
In 2003, her first husband discovered she had forged his signature, transferring their matrimonial property to her name exclusively and depleting his superannuation fund, the court was told.
Razos was jailed for four months in 2009 after being found guilty of various fraudulent activity, which included stealing from her ex-husband and Taylor.
Kelly questioned how Moray and Agnew could have been oblivious to Razos’ extensive criminal history when they employed her. “How this was kept from them, I do not know,” he said.
The court heard Razos had acted over many years with “carefully calculated and repeated, deliberate acts of dishonesty” in what Kelly described as a wholesale breach of her employer’s trust.
Razos paid back more than $1 million before she was charged with the offending, but the court heard there had been no indication she would have stopped offending voluntarily, and her criminality had grown more ambitious over the years.
The court heard Razos’ prospects for rehabilitation were “complex” but her age and notoriety reduced her risk of reoffending.
The court was told Razos had suffered from major depressive disorder, and forensic psychologist Patrick Newton previously submitted her mental health issues lowered her moral culpability because it impeded on her ability to make clear and rational decisions. However, he said it would not have impaired her ability to comprehend the wrongfulness of her conduct.
In 2017, the Victorian Legal Services Board blocked her from working in the legal industry and released a statement that included 14 different aliases she had used, including Athena Bouzas, Zizzi Athena, Teena Zissiadis and Tina Zissiadis-Ligris. Razos was banned from being a legal practitioner in 2020.
The regulator said Razos’ sentence was the result of a lengthy and complex investigation by the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner.
On Friday, the regulator’s acting chief executive and Commissioner Matthew Anstee urged law firms to perform background and police checks on the non-legal staff they hire and provide ongoing supervision.
“It is often as simple as a phone call, and results of not doing this can be catastrophic,” he said.
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