A man in the grip of ice addiction used family ties to a Wollongong doctor’s clinic to dupe Medicare into financing his hidden $500-a-week drug habit, eventually siphoning a whopping $65,656.95 from the public purse. Daniel Patrick Mulquin’s mother Linda Mulquin sobbed from the public gallery of Wollongong Local Court on Thursday as her son was jailed for four months and ordered to repay the money. Mrs Mulquin, a receptionist at the Smith Street clinic of her psychiatrist brother, Dr Anthony Durrell, believed her son was struggling with mental illness when she arranged for him to visit the clinic to assist her with odd jobs, as a way of keeping him occupied. But Mulquin, 31, used his position to illegally access the Medicare Easyclaim system, which is used to process patient and bulk bill claims via the EFTPOS network. The access allowed Mulquin to electronically claim he had visited a doctor and paid his bill in full, entitling him to a Medicare benefit. Between 2 December, 2013 and 7 August 2015, he made 173 fake claims for “rebates” worth up to $496.75 at a time. On 157 occasions, he did this by either swiping or manually entering his debit card. On another 16 occasions, he lodged a claim at a Medicare Service Centre, which then required processing. In October 2014, at the height of his offending, he collected almost $11,000 after claiming to have visited a doctor 24 times in a 31-day period. In court on Thursday Mulquin told Magistrate Michael Stoddart he became a casual user of methylamphetamine in 2008 after a partner introduced him to the drug. His usage spiked after he was hospitalised with severe lacerations to his face and hand following a domestic dispute in 2010. From 2011 he used the drug as a way of escaping feelings of depression and anxiety, his volatile relationship and job frustrations, he said. By 2014 he was using the drug at least every other day, and also started using GHB heavily in 2013 and 2014. The court heard he suffered a breakdown after he was made redundant from his job in March 2014 and he then moved from Sydney back to his parents’ Mount Ousley home. He formally confessed his crimes to the Department of Health office on February 6, 2017, about three months after he kicked his drug habit and began getting his life back on track, regaining employment and studying an IT diploma. He said he had informed his uncle of his offending in August 2016, and “I understand he called Medicare to inform them”. Magistrate Michael Stoddart condemned the scale and nature of Mulquin’s deceit.
