Man jailed for impersonating, stealing from father

Laine Clark | May 4, 2023

After impersonating his father to access his bank account, James Howard Tanks took almost $200,000 and spent it on drugs.

Even after his dad reset the account password, Tanks again pretended to be his father to organise banking access and resumed draining money until it was all gone.

For seven months from June 2020, Tanks siphoned the money after discovering his father had inherited more than $200,000.

Tanks, 43, was living with his parents at the time.

“You are a middle-aged man. Your parents had allowed you to live in their home – you betrayed that trust in a calculated way,” Judge Leanne Clare said.

Overall he transferred $198,585 to his account in more than 230 transactions, Brisbane District Court was told on Wednesday.

Living with his parents allowed Tanks to access “sufficient personal information” to be able to impersonate his father on the phone, the court heard.

He rang the bank and pretended to be his father to reset the account’s password, and change the email and phone details to his own.

Tanks then began moving his father’s money “almost immediately”.

He even organised with the bank over the phone an increase in daily withdrawal limits for the account.

Five months after Tanks began taking the money, his father went into a bank branch and reset the account details.

“It was an interruption to your spending but it did not stop you,” Judge Clare said.

He waited three weeks before again ringing up the bank pretending to be his father to reset passwords and resumed fleecing him.

“When your father eventually went to buy something he was told there was nothing left,” Judge Clare said.

“You had taken all the money from that account and spent it. That was a lot of money that’s just been blown.

“There seems no prospect that you will repay it.”

Defence barrister Simon Lewis described it as an opportunistic offence.

Judge Clare replied: “Opportunistic in the sense that it was his father and he became aware that he had money but he went out of his way to get that money.”

Tanks had a troubled early life which had led to substance use, court was told.

Mr Lewis said Tanks was using his father’s money to support a drug habit and was taking heroin and cocaine at the time.

The defence barrister noted that a psychologist’s report said Tanks was a low risk of stealing from his father again.

“I would have thought that was a given, especially if there’s no money left,” Judge Clare said.

Tanks pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, domestic violence offence, and was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail, with a September 2024 parole date.