An Illawarra man has been charged with fraud after allegedly claiming he had COVID-19 to avoid going to work.
\nAbout 4.15am on Monday (2 August 2021), the 23-year-old allegedly sent a text message to his employer, stating he had contracted COVID-19 and was unable to go to work in Newcastle.
\nHis co-workers were stood down and self-isolated while awaiting their test results, and several locations near his place of employment required deep cleaning.
\nLater that day, the man allegedly sent another text to his employer advising his second test returned a negative result.
\nSubsequent inquiries confirmed the man never received a positive test result.
\nThe matter was referred to the NSW Police Force, with officers attached to Wollongong Police District commencing an investigation.
\nAbout 1pm yesterday (Thursday 5 August 2021), the man attended Wollongong Police Station, where he was arrested and charged with conveying false information that a person or property is in danger.
\nThe West Wollongong man was granted bail to appear at Wollongong Local Court on Tuesday 14 September 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Illawarra man has been charged with fraud after allegedly claiming he had COVID-19 to avoid going to work. About 4.15am on Monday (2 August 2021), the 23-year-old allegedly sent a text message to his employer, stating he had contracted COVID-19 and was unable to go to work in Newcastle. His co-workers were stood down … Continue reading “Man charged with fraud over alleged fake COVID result – Wollongong”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}