Darren Casha pleads guilty to carrying out electrical work at Wallan house while unlicensed
A WALLAN couple has been left thousands of dollars out of pocket after finding the electrician who wired their home was unlicensed.
Victoria Grammatikas said Essendon man Darren Casha had betrayed her trust after he took years worth of her savings to carry out the work between 2013-14.
Ms Grammatikas’s Wallan house, which she lives in with partner Giuseppe Grasso, still bears the hallmarks of Casha’s work.
“We trusted (Casha) in our home and we paid him top dollar,” she said.
“He put up a ceiling fan in our alfresco area and the next morning we came out and it was hanging.
“If someone was under there they would have gotten hurt.
“We got a brand new phone, we plugged it in our bedroom, picked it up, it’s not working.
“He put the plate there and it’s a dud, he didn’t connect it.”
“The switchboard had to be fixed because it wasn’t compliant and that cost us $1700.
“Quite a lot of stuff needs to be redone and put in, unfortunately we don’t have $11,000 to fix it. “It makes me upset, it makes me very angry.”
Energy Safety Victoria (ESV) took Casha to court earlier this year.
He pleaded guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on July 27 to carrying out electrical work while unlicensed and giving false and misleading information.
He was fined $12,000 without conviction, his company Global Electrical Solutions was fined $5000 and he was ordered to pay ESV’s legal costs of $1500.
He was given until October 24 to pay, but he successfully appealed the sentence and his penalty was reduced in the Victorian County Court to a $1000 fine with a two-year good behaviour bond.
His company’s fine was reduced to $3500.
Magistrate Hugh Radford heard that Casha agreed to complete the work because he was nearing the end of his electrical apprenticeship, but due to complications with the TAFE he was attending, he never completed his final exams to get qualified.
John Murphy, prosecuting the case on behalf of ESV, said in addition to carrying out the work while unqualified, Casha billed the homeowners $14,000 and provided them with a fake compliance certificate.
Casha’s lawyer Dan Cash said his client, who was aged 24 at the time, made an “extremely foolish decision” for which he was taking responsibility for by pleading guilty at the first available opportunity.
The court also heard that no one had been injured or killed as a result of the work Casha had carried out, although it had not been up to the high standard of a qualified tradesman.
Magistrate Radford said the legislation Casha was charged under was introduced to protect the community from people he described as “backyard jobbers masquerading as qualified electricians”.
“People are entitled to live in a property that is safe and that has been correctly wired as someone could suffer an electric shock or get killed if something is not done properly and by someone not qualified to do it,” he said.
Mr Radford took into account Casha’s early guilty plea, but said any sentence he handed down needed to act as a strong general deterrent to the rest of the community.
His company, which the court heard was no longer operating but was still registered while Casha paid off debts he owed to the Australian Taxation Office, was also charged with similar offences under the Electricity Safety Act.
Casha’s facebook page says he is the chief executive at Global Electrical Solutions.