Gold Coast filmmaker to face fresh fraud trial after jury dismissed

The trial of a Gold Coast filmmaker accused of a multimillion-dollar fraud has been delayed after the jury was dismissed and the judge ruled a mistrial.

Luke Sparke, 42, will face a fresh trial at a date to be revealed in coming weeks.

He was facing 17 counts of fraud in Brisbane’s District Court over offences allegedly committed between February 2017 and November 2019 when he was a bankrupt. He had pleaded not guilty.

The charges relate to how Sparke secured loans to make his movies, and the fact he gave personal guarantees for those loans while allegedly failing to disclose his status as a bankrupt.

But on just the second day of evidence in a case originally scheduled to take four weeks, the trial was adjourned.

Judge Glen Cranny discharged the jury after the prosecution introduced some late evidence. The defence argued this was unfair and sought to have the charges dismissed.

But Cranny ruled on Tuesday that there had been no improper conduct on the prosecution’s part, and that the trial would begin again with a fresh jury at a date yet to be set .

Sparke still faces the possibility of prison, with non-disclosure of bankruptcy when obtaining credit of more than $3000 carrying a potential term of up to five years per charge.

On the second day of the trial, in evidence heard before a jury, accountant Terence Rose – who has managed the administration of a number of Sparke-aligned failed companies through insolvency experts SV Partners – told the court that the filmmaker’s debts were well into the eight-figure range.

“At one stage … it was around about $11 million, and there were some secured creditors there as well, which were about $6 million,” Rose said. “I recall by the time I did the dividend, they were probably up towards about $17 million.”

The company in question was Sparkefilms Pty Ltd, through which Sparke made the science-fiction alien invasion film Occupation , released in May 2018. That company entered administration in early 2018 and was wound up in August 2020.

The film was made with a reported $6 million budget, with most of the funds raised through loans from private investors. According to boxofficemojo.com , the film made just under $US22,000 at the cinema.

Four of the people who lent money to Sparkefilms were slated to testify before the court, but they represented just a fraction of those who claim to have lost money through their association with the company, of which Sparke and his wife, Carly Sparke, were directors.

Terence van der Velde, who was Sparke’s bankruptcy trustee at SV Partners, told the court: “We identified a number of creditors that weren’t included in the statement of affairs … I think we ended up with about 74 creditors.”