Painted parrot scam lands Australian in jail .
PERTH , Australia 1996-08-27
A conman who painted common Australian parrots with dye to make them look like rare birds worth thousands of dollars was jailed for fraud on Tuesday .
Denham Peiris painted six green parrots , worth about A$ 100 ( US$ 79 ) a pair , with a cinnamon hair dye and traded them as Indian Ringneck Parrots , valued at A$ 14,000 a pair .
Peiris , 32 , of Perth , was sentenced in the Western Australian District Court to two years in jail for fraud after trading three pairs of impostor birds for 21 parrots worth a total of A$ 28,000 .
" Everyone was fooled , " said pet shop owner Shane Drew , who unknowingly traded the disguised birds .
" I 'd already had three local breeders have a look at them and sent photos and videos of the birds to the eastern states for authentication -- they said they 're nice birds , " Drew told reporters outside court .
" After I was told they were dyed , I checked them over again .
It was a perfect paint job except for one feather under a wing of one bird that was only half dyed , " Drew said .
Drew said Peiris , a bird enthusiast , would have succeeded with the fraud if he had not tried to trade a fourth pair of bogus birds after an associate had told police of the scam .
If not for the informant , the painted parrots ' true colours would not have been known for six months , he said .
" They moult in the summer , so five or six months down the track , I would have looked like the guilty party , " Drew said .