By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A former carpenter whose drug habit raged after his business collapsed has been jailed for a spree of disqualified driving.
Adam Grazotis, 29, was caught driving disqualified nine times and driving an unregistered car four times across Melbourne between June 2016 and November 2017, Dandenong Magistrates’ Court heard.
On the last occasion, in Paperbark Street, Doveton, Grazotis gave a false name to police to try to avoid having his friend’s car impounded, he claimed.
Prior to the court hearing on 26 February, Grazotis’s licence was already disqualified until 2020 for refusing a drug-driving test.
Things “really began to fall off the rails” in Grazotis’s mid-twenties, lawyer Daniel Walsh told the court on 26 February.
At his career peak, Grazotis was hiring up to six sub-contractors.
Then at 24, he made a “business mistake” that left him owing significant penalty wages while a building project was delayed.
For 18 months, he virtually worked for nothing as he paid back the owed wages.
At 26, he lost his job after suffering a workplace injury falling off collapsed roof scaffolding, Mr Walsh said.
Grazotis’s use of meth and GHB escalated, and led to offending, a jail term and a community corrections order in 2016.
Magistrate Pauline Spencer said jail was necessary to deter Grazotis and other repeated disqualified-driving offenders.
“You were flouting the law … and just driving regardless. That’s just not acceptable.”
Grazotis was jailed for six months with a CCO, but could expect longer jail stints if he reoffended in similar fashion, Ms Spencer said.
He was urged to start his rehabilitation and to accept assistance to find work during the corrections order.
