A man who pretended to rob a luxury jewellery store and tied up a terrified employee as part of an alleged $2.8 million insurance fraud plot has been jailed for his reckless crime. Shanel Tofaeono, 39, was part of a wider scheme allegedly headed up by jeweller Michel Germani to stage a robbery of his Hilton Hotel store in Sydney's CBD in January 2022.
The 39-year-old is the only one of six arrested to have pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Wednesday to a maximum four years and seven months in prison. Judge John Pickering said Tofaeono had met his co-conspirators hours before heading to the Sydney store to commit the staged robbery with another accused Mounir Helou. Germani was tied up to make the fake burglary more convincing, while the female employee had her neck grabbed and was told to unload jewellery from the store's safe into bags before being bound with cable ties, the judge said.
"Some of the jewellery fell onto the floor as her hands were shaking so much due to fear," he said. "For her, for all intents and purposes, she was then involved in what was a very real robbery to her, one that must have been terrifying." Tofaeono was reckless as to the woman's suffering at the time, the judge ruled.
Helou, Germani, Germani's wife Coco, Andrea David Cusumano, and Giulia Penna have each pleaded not guilty to various charges brought over the alleged incident and will face a joint trial in May 2025. On Wednesday, Judge Pickering discounted Tofaeono's sentence due to his early .