Beau Wiles, the Bellambi man who famously escaped Supermax and posted prison selfies taken with a contraband mobile phone, has had some time shaved off his latest jail sentence.
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Wiles is serving a non-parole period of five months for stealing the keys to a set of pokie machines at Hotel Illawarra on September 26.
With a tattoo visible over his right eye, he was captured on CCTV leaving with the keys and quickly identified.
On October 9 he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment with a non-parole period of five months.
He fronted Wollongong District Court on Friday to appeal the sentence, his lawyer explaining he wanted to address his drug addiction problem in a residential rehabilitation program.
His lawyer, Ms Parkes, said he had been living in a housing commission complex at Mangerton.
“There are a lot of other people that use ice [there] and he developed an addiction,” she said, adding he was also addicted to gambling.
Judge Andrew Haesler noted the “significant consequences” of the theft for the hotel, which was required to change the locks to its machines, at a cost of $1700.
“The down side of having distinctive tattoos is that they are distinctive,” he told Wiles. “It didn’t stop you. The fact that you were on parole didn’t stop you.”
He varied Wiles’ sentence to a non-parole period of four months, making him eligible for parole January 27.
Wiles had about 10 months of his sentence still to serve when he escaped from Goulburn prison on September 30, 2016.
He remained on the run for about 30 hours. Meantime, pictures taken inside prison and published to his social media page piqued the interest of news outlets around the world.