From Ben Grubb at Gay Sydney News:
Australian serial Grindr fraudster and catfisher Dong Qiao Li has been sentenced to three months in jail for defrauding his latest victim after a magistrate heard of his decade-long history of scamming victims out of almost $120,000, many of whom he met on the gay dating and hookup app.
Li, 32, was sentenced at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday after earlier pleading guilty to four dishonesty charges, including multiple counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception.
The magistrate called his offending “cold and calculating” and “behaviour [that] robs other people of any trust or confidence” in online dating.
Li received a one-month jail sentence for his latest fraud and a further two months’ imprisonment after he was resentenced for breaching a previous community correction order by leaving Victoria without permission while allegedly committing further related offences in Sydney.
Li was not sentenced for a breach of the correction order itself, with Magistrate Carolyn Burnside saying that “any day in jail is a hard day, and I take into account that he will find it very difficult”.
Li had stolen $1417 from his latest victim using the same method the court heard he had been relying on for years across Australia: posing on Grindr with photos that weren’t of him, luring men to hotel rooms where they often only then realised he was not the person pictured, engaging in consensual sex, and secretly photographing their identification and bank cards while they showered to later commit fraud.
He used victims’ identity information to buy plane tickets, hotel rooms, clothing and skincare, said Magistrate Carolyn Burnside.
On Friday, after extensive criminal checks were conducted by the police prosector in the case, only after Gay Sydney News revealed his prior offending in other states, when the magistrate questioned why there was media interest in the matter, was his total deception unmasked: defrauding $119,968.15 from victims across Australia, most of them in South Australia, followed by Victoria and NSW.
The jailing follows the court hearing Li had outstanding arrest warrants for alleged offences committed in NSW and South Australia, as well as prior convictions for shoplifting and possessing child pornography.
Before Gay Sydney News revealed Li’s prior offending to the court, the police prosecutor was only seeking a correction order for his latest offending. After learning of his extensive criminal history, the prosecutor changed their position and pursued a jail term instead.
The magistrate also initially told Li’s lawyer she “would like your client to be assessed for a correction order”, but changed her view after learning of his history.
“If this level of deception is as bad as I think it is”, Magistrate Burnside told an earlier hearing she was “not thinking about a community corrections order at all in this matter”.
Magistrate Burnside described Li’s Grindr offending as “cold and calculating”.
“Your behaviour robs other people of any trust or confidence in the modern form of meeting people, especially sometimes for gay people, where their dating apps are fairly important,” Magistrate Burnside said.
“This is a modern way of forming relationships, and you’ve been clever enough, and conniving enough, to take advantage of that form of meeting people.
“You’ve been doing it for over 10 years now. So from a long, long time ago, in 2013.”
Magistrate Burnside said Li had “been given so many opportunities” to “realise the gravity of this fraudulent behaviour, to realise how dishonest and damaging it is to other people”.
Magistrate Burnside said she would have imposed a harsher sentence on Li if not for letters from mental health specialists revealing he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from a car accident he was involved in as a child that killed his stepfather and disfigured his mother.
“I would have sentenced you to a 12-month term of imprisonment with a six-month non-parole period if not for your post-traumatic stress disorder and what you suffered as a child,” she said.
“I want you to get this message: You must understand that this style of offending may have hurt people quite deeply and badly.
“Jail is always and must always be a last resort, Mr Li. However, on this occasion, where it’s me that … [has] the responsibility of sentencing you, it is my view that you should serve a term of imprisonment.
“This modus operandi is furtive, it’s planned, and for you, it’s quite profitable,” she said.
Magistrate Burnside said Li’s two sentences would be served cumulatively, with the two days he spent in custody after his April arrest counted as time served.
Li’s sentencing brings to a close a case that has exposed gaps in the way criminal histories can be presented in court.
Earlier in the case, Magistrate Burnside was left “flabbergasted” and feeling “ill-informed” by the failure of prosecutors and Li’s lawyer to disclose the full extent of his past offending across Australia, which only became apparent to the court after the magistrate asked journalists why they were so interested in what she considered a minor matter.
After Gay Sydney News responded, telling her of Li’s extensive criminal history, much of which was available via a Google search, Magistrate Burnside demanded prosecutors seek further information before she proceeded to sentencing.
Magistrate Burnside said 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 did), and then proceeded to tell the police prosector that she wanted to “know what’s going on in NSW and if there are other matters in other states in Australia, so that I have a complete picture of the matter”.
Even though the police prosector in Friday’s hearing had attempted to get all information about Li’s prior convictions from across Australia, she said she was still having difficulty securing some from South Australia, particularly to confirm the monetary value of Li’s offending there.
The court was previously told Li had been placed on a community corrections order in Victoria for similar offending in April 2021 and that he left the state for Sydney later that year, in breach of the order.
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 Victorian case.
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.
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 latest Victorian matter. The other prior conviction in NSW was a larger amount of “around seven or eight thousand [dollars]”.
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.