Suzy Zreika and Ali Al Sharifi did not want their names associated with a child care centre they were using to rort taxpayer-funded supports and subsidies.
The pair are awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to cause a loss to the Commonwealth, as a pair of senior barristers urged a judge not to send them both to jail on Thursday.
Al Sharifi, 32, was not supposed to be running child care centres and operated under a fake name, the court heard.
"Your Honour could readily conclude … Mr Al Sharifi was anxious that his identity not be known to the authorities as a consequence," Al Sharifi's barrister David Barrow SC told a court on Thursday.
Zreika's June 2020 phone call to Al Sharifi informing him one of the centre educators accidentally used his real name at the office and was recorded by police who had begun surveilling their communications.
The 49-year-old similarly did not want her name associated, potentially to distance herself from the business or to avoid indirectly identifying her co-offender, her barrister Phillip Boulten SC said.
Both referred to themselves as "silent owners" of ABC Kids N Care Family Day Care in phone calls intercepted by police.
The pair provided false documents and information to the commonwealth education department, which included false session information about kids being cared for.
Some of the services claimed were not eligible while others were not provided.
Between March 15 and October 21, 2020 the company received $575,119.76 in payments made as part of COVID-19 relief package and child care subsidies with $193,710.35 transferred to the pair's personal accounts.
Zreika forwarded $102,900 to Al Sharifi's bank account and kept $90,810.35 for herself, according to court documents.
Mr Boulten told Sydney's Downing Centre District Court Zreika was not solely responsible for the administrative arrangements that allowed educators at the centre to overstate their hours.
While she may have been initially prepared to "live with" illegal conduct committed by others, Zreika eventually gained a "more crystallised understanding that the educators were going to claim more hours than the law permitted them to claim," Mr Boulten told the court.
"No one pretends they didn't realise what was going on," he said.
However, she had a low likelihood of reoffending, had offered to pay back the money she derived from the scheme and was ashamed of her illegal actions, Mr Boulten said.
"She cannot help but be ashamed because what she did was shameful and she's been exposed as dishonest," he said.
Prosecutors told the court the pair could not blame the educators' wrongdoing for their offending, having been charged with a conspiracy as part of an agreement to rort subsidies in place to support families.
Judge Warwick Hunt has scheduled a sentence on Friday afternoon.
