Duress arising from threats may constitute a mitigating factor on sentence, but the weight to be given to it is a matter for the sentencing judge and will not ground appellate intervention unless the weight given was so inadequate as to constitute a House v The King error. Financial difficulties are no answer to the commission of a criminal offence. Where multiple fraud offences each involve separate premeditated acts, differences in amounts involved in individual offences need not be reflected in differentiated sentences where the differences are not 'strikingly overwhelming'.
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