Police say they now want a jail sentence imposed on a 32-year-old man who has repeatedly used Grindr to catfish and defraud victims – only after the extent of his past offending was raised in court by a journalist representing Gay Sydney News (GSN), leaving the magistrate in the case “flabbergasted” by the fact his full criminal history had not been raised with her by prosectors or the man’s own lawyer.
Dong Qiao Li, 32, faced Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday this week after pleading guilty to four dishonesty charges, which included multiple counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception, amounting to $1417 worth of money stolen from his latest victim.
In a media release, Victoria Police had initially accused him of luring people into a Melbourne hotel room using hook-up app Grindr, where he was alleged to have taken photos of their ID documents and used them to commit fraud. Each of the financial advantage charges carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
While the evidence before the Victorian magistrate in the current case refers only to a single victim, the court has since become aware that Li is a serial fraudster – and that he has two outstanding arrest warrants, in NSW and South Australia.
The court heard that Li, who is currently on Centrelink welfare payments, defrauded victims by catfishing them on Grindr using someone else’s photos and arranging to meet them at a hotel. There, a consensual intimate encounter would ensue and while the victim was in the shower he would take a photo of person identification documents, such as credit cards.
Media initially blocked from identifying Li
When Li entered his guilty pleas on August 21, Magistrate Carolyn Burnside told media present that they were not permitted to use his name in any reporting on the case.
This came despite the magistrate hearing objections to this directive from a journalist representing Gay Sydney News and another reporter from Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper.
Magistrate Burnside’s direction to the media followed a disclosure by Li’s lawyer, Katrina Hartman, that her client was born in China and had a history of mental health issues and trauma, including being in the back seat of a car accident that killed his stepfather and left his mother disfigured.
But on Thursday this week, when Gay Sydney News again objected to the court preventing media from reporting Li’s name – and following a fuller picture of his prior convictions being raised to the astonishment of Magistrate Burnside – the initial direction against unmasking his identity was reversed.
In the earlier August 21 hearing, Li’s lawyer had also sought a suppression order over certain details of the case on mental health grounds, but this was rejected by the magistrate.
“I’m not satisfied … that this case and the evidence put before the court would cause mental health problems of such a gravity and level of harm that I should allow for the suppression to be made,” Magistrate Burnside said then. “This is an important case.”
Magistrate ‘flabbergasted’
Magistrate Burnside said during this Thursday’s hearing that she was “flabbergasted” Li’s prior interstate convictions, many similar in nature to the Victorian case before her, had not been raised in court until now.
The first hint she had that there was similar offending in other states was when she asked journalists dialled into the August 21 hearing why they were so interested in the case.
“Can I ask both of you, the amount that the defendant has pleaded guilty to was … $1417. Why is this case regarded as so interesting?” Magistrate Burnside asked media.
Responded the author of this Gay Sydney News article: “This man has prior convictions across the country. He’s [also got] an [outstanding] arrest warrant in NSW. The re-offending is … part of the equation.
“And for my particular community, the gay community, who are the vulnerable victims of this man, I think it speaks to a warning to people to be wary.”
The magistrate responded that she “had no idea … there were any prior convictions in a different state”, asked Gay Sydney News whether the NSW matter involved a similar form of offending (it does), and then proceeded to tell the police prosector that she wanted to “know what’s going on in NSW and if there if there are other matters in other states in Australia, so that I have a complete picture of the matter”.
“I haven’t sentenced [yet]… and at the moment I feel as though I’m a little bit ill-informed to do so,” said Magistrate Burnside.
Li’s first court appearance in the Victorian matter was in early April, and while it was initially raised then that there was an active NSW arrest warrant, this was only said in court before a different magistrate who was being asked by Li’s then-lawyer to grant him bail after he had been placed in custody. Li has since changed lawyers.
Other interstate offences and details of what the latest NSW case was about were not raised during the bail hearing before that earlier magistrate.
Despite Victoria Police opposing bail at the time, warning that Li was a flight risk due to him failing to appear at the Sydney court that issued the NSW arrest warrant because of his absence, the earlier Victorian magistrate granted Li bail with reporting conditions.
On Thursday this week, during what was expected to be a sentencing, Magistrate Burnside was once again left blindsided when an extensive rap sheet of offending was revealed to the court that went beyond offending in NSW.
“We came to court last week and I had no idea about any NSW priors,” Magistrate Burnside said.
“I thought there might have been one. How many are there?”
“Your Honour, there are quite a lot…,” responded the police prosector.
The court was also told Li had been placed on a community corrections order in Victoria for similar offending in April 2021 and that he was believed to have left the state for Sydney later that year, in breach of the order.
In another bizarre twist in the earlier hearing on August 21, it was only when a Corrections Victoria prosecutor – who happened to be waiting in court for an unrelated matter – overheard the magistrate asking about Li’s compliance with the prior Victorian corrections order that the breach was revealed
“So by accident, I happened to be here,” said the Corrections Victoria prosecutor.
“I’ve done some inquiries, and I’ve been advised by a supervisor that a warrant was lost in Ballarat, and so we weren’t able to proceed with the breach. There is still a current breach in place, Your Honour.”
The magistrate said then that the Corrections Victoria prosecutor should serve Li the breach at that hearing or on a later date and that Li’s lawyer should advise her “whether or not I should also be dealing with that”.
Back at this Thursday’s hearing, Magistrate Burnside said that “for anybody to just leave the state when they’re meant to be committing themselves to a corrections order, let alone reoffend in the very same fashion, it’s showing a lot of disregard for the court system, in my view”.
The court also heard Li had been convicted of similar offences in NSW in September 2021 and that the active warrant for his arrest in the state was over offences alleged to have occurred between 2018 and January 2025. They were said to involve the same method of offending as the current Victorian case.
“It’s alleged that bank cards have been stolen in hotel rooms and have been used to make purchases, including flights, additional hotel rooms and et cetera,” the police prosecutor said of the latest NSW case.
“So it’s the shower situation again,” remarked Burnside, to which the prosector confirmed it was.
As previously reported by Gay Sydney News, a NSW court heard one of his recent matters ex parte (without Li in attendance), and a conviction was recorded against him, as well as the arrest warrant issued for him to return for sentencing. Because the NSW matter was heard in his absence, he still has the legal right to seek to overturn the conviction.
A shoplifting offence was also mentioned by the magistrate as she read documents provided by the prosector about the previous NSW offences.
The prosecutor said the outstanding warrant in NSW in relation to alleged fraud in that state was said to be in a similar range to the $1400 worth of fraud committed in the current Victorian case.
The other prior conviction in NSW was a larger amount of “around seven or eight thousand [dollars]”, said the police prosector, “but I would just need to confirm that specifically.”
The Melbourne Magistrates’ Court also heard that Li’s other prior convictions included dishonesty matters in South Australia between 2014 and 2016, said to involve a minimum of $12,000. As a result of that matter, Li received a wholly suspended 12-month jail term, meaning he was not placed behind bars.
The prosector also raised the fact there was an active arrest warrant for Li in South Australia.
Magistrate left ‘flabbergasted’
Magistrate Burnside expressed shock at learning more about Li’s extensive prior criminal history only after it was raised by the media.
“I have to say Ms Hartman, if you didn’t have instructions to this effect [about all these priors], and I can only assume that you didn’t, that’s poor in and of itself; that’s dishonest,” she said to Li’s lawyer, later clarifying that she was “not casting any aspersions in respect” to Hartman.
“Now I know it’s for the prosecution [to raise priors], but this is a plea of guilty [and] the prosecution must always bear the onus, but your client would have known that there are all these other priors….
“Because remember when I said to the media last week, I said, “What’s the interest here?’
“I am flabbergasted. Are you madame prosecutor?”
The prosector said that finding out about the additional prior convictions “was certainly a surprise to me” but conceded that the interstate matters didn’t form part of the police’s original brief of evidence. “So it was also a surprise to … [Li’s lawyer] in terms of disclosure [as well],” said the prosector.
‘Sophisticated… very planned’ offending
Magistrate Burnside described Li’s offending as “sophisticated” and “very planned”.
“This is a very intelligent man who’s repeatedly taken advantage of people that could be regarded as vulnerable because of their sexuality,” she said this week.
Despite courts “stepping in on a number of occasions to correct the behaviour”, she said it looked to her as though Li had “defied or otherwise overlooked” the interest he needed to be showing Victoria’s criminal justice system.
“If this level of deception is as bad as I think it is”, Magistrate Burnside said she was “not thinking about a community corrections order at all in this matter”, hinting Li could face a harsher penalty such as jail time.
Police seek jail time
The police prosecutor said that given the new information about Li’s prior offences coming to light, police had also changed their stance from seeking a corrections order to instead pursuing a prison term.
Magistrate Burnside said that without more detail about Li’s prior convictions, she would be unable to sentence him this week.
The magistrate scheduled a new hearing for September 5 and directed the prosecutor in the case to provide her with a chronology of Li’s prior convictions, along with further details of the interstate matters, in advance of that date so that she could read it ahead of time and proceed to sentencing.
“I want all these [case] summaries … because otherwise I’m looking like the silly one,” said Magistrate Burnside. “The more information I get before the 5th [of September], the happier I will be.
“I’m looking like the court has not got the full picture, and so I’m definitely not sentencing today.
“I’ve got to get to the bottom [of this] and work out what the other [interstate] matters amount to before I can properly turn my mind to sentencing.”
Li remains on bail, reporting in weekly to Ballarat police station.
While his lawyer told the court he had a Bachelor of Commerce and had signed a contract in July for a customer service role in the communications space, he remained on Centrelink welfare payments while waiting to start work.
Magistrate Burnside reminded Li that “when a person is on bail, that bail can be revoked”.
“What I mean by that is, if you don’t show interest in not offending, and there’s any other evidence of further offending, you would be in breach of your bail.”
Ben Grubb is the founder and editor of Gay Sydney News, an independent publication covering LGBTQIA+ news. A journalist with more than 15 years' experience, he has reported and edited for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WAToday, Brisbane Times, The Australian Financial Review, News.com.au, ZDNet, TelecomTimes and iTnews, primarily on the topic of technology. He previously hosted The Informer, a queer current affairs program on Melbourne’s JOY 94.9 radio station, and contributes to LGBTQIA+ media including Stun Magazine. Ben has also appeared as a technology commentator on Channel Ten's The Project, ABC RN’s Download This Show and commercial radio stations 2UE, 2GB and 6PR. Contact Ben: ben.grubb@gaysydneynews.com.au
