South Australian contractor Dylan Iliopoulos, who was convicted of bashing and blackmailing his former boss for $25,000, told a court he is innocent, despite a guilty verdict of the jury.
Iliopoulos, 31, and his father Elias, 57, were found guilty at trial of aggravated blackmail after attacking Gary Doody in November 2020.
They argued the victim had owed Iliopoulos money for work done on a Naracoorte playground site, meaning the incident was not a case of “vigilante justice.”
“I accept there was a genuine debt, but it was not $25,000, and the real issue here is your client went in and roughed up demanding money that he was just never owed,” Judge Barklay said.
“Then he lied through his teeth to the police… Assuming I accept the victim’s evidence – which, I can tell you, I do – this really was just an exercise in thuggery.”
Prosecutors alleged, and the jury accepted, that Iliopoulos had claimed his job was “going around and getting money from builders who don’t pay.”
On Wednesday, August 7, Iliopoulos’ lawyer Chris Allen said his client was a hardworking husband and father whose family would be “destroyed” were he jailed.
Judge Barklay settled on a home detention report instead of prison, but stressed that was no indication as to how he would sentence the men.
He remanded them on continuing bail for sentencing next month.
Source: The Advertiser.
