Jonathan Clift - Self-Centered Lying Lawyer

Judge Geoff Chettle said Clift was a self-centred liar and just because he said he was remorseful did not mean that he was.

"He's a manipulative fellow who knows his way around the system and he has a problem with honesty," Judge Chettle said.

A former Dandenong lawyer who kept a hidden stash of nearly 300,000 child porn images and who had also forged police documents to keep his job at a disabled services centre has had his sentence increased.

The Victorian County Court on Tuesday increased Jonathan Clift's jail sentence to a minimum of four years following a search on his Melbourne home.

Clift, 53, had already been sentenced in the County Court June this year to 35 months for perverting the course of justice.

The search of his Dandenong home in August last year turned up child pornography images carefully filed inside a hidden safe.

The DVD and CDs contained more than 293,000 images and 864 movies of child pornography, the court heard.

He had also forged a National Police Certificate to keep his job as a support worker with a disability service provider and, in a bid to delay charges against him, made up bogus medical certificates claiming he had cancer.

Judge Geoff Chettle said Clift was a self-centred liar and just because he said he was remorseful did not mean that he was.

"He's a manipulative fellow who knows his way around the system and he has a problem with honesty," Judge Chettle said.

Clift pleaded guilty to one count each of producing and possessing child pornography, making and using a false document and possessing property suspected to be proceeds of crime.

The court heard that in 2006 Clift made false documents stating he had cancer so he could delay his prosecution on charges of possessing 60,000 child pornography images.

The same year, he provided a false National Police Certificate to his employer, a disability service provider, in response to questions about child pornography charges against him.

The false document concealed his criminal background.

Judge Chettle set Clift's new minimum term at four years.

"I am dealing with a man who has an unnatural preoccupation with child sex," Judge Chettle said.

"There are hundreds of thousand of victims."

Judge Chettle sentenced Clift to a maximum term of four-and-a-half years.