“Why would they embark on this? It can't be for money. It's almost impossible to comprehend,” a judge wondered out loud this week, Australian Associated Press reported, as he weighed whether to allow Lean to avoid prison and stay home with her kids.

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Lean made only good news in Australian newspapers through much of the 2000s — at a cake-cutting ceremony for a day-care facility, and once for helping indigenous children write a song about what she called “a better future.”

She and her husband, Simon Peisley, were lauded for their work with indigenous families in the House of Assembly in 2008 — three years before, prosecutors say, they embarked on their bizarre scam.

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Lean and Peisley worked in the same government health department by 2011, but Lean wanted out, prosecutors said, according to the Advertiser. So she and her husband started writing letters to themselves — ominous, anonymous demands that she step down from her job or face terrible consequences.

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A detective read one of them aloud in court, the New Zealand Herald reported: “We're waiting for that baby of yours. We're going to slice her from ear to ear. You can't keep her safe forever.”

“Greed” took over as the couple discovered the benefits of playing victim, prosecutors said, according to the Advertiser.

They once reported a break-in at their apartment in Adelaide, according to the Herald, with expletives left on the walls and windows written in black paint and tomato sauce.

“They even went so far as to send their children items at school,” a prosecutor said. One package contained their own children's clothing covered in what turned out to be fake blood, Australian Associated Press reported.

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Other red-stained parcels arrived at the couple's office, where their co-workers initially fell under suspicion for the threats. The government gave Lean and Peisley as much time off from their jobs as they wanted, with nearly full pay.

Their three children — 6, 11 and 16 by the time of the trial — were too scared to sleep in their beds, the Advertiser wrote. So the state paid for holidays across Australia and relocated the family to a luxury apartment at the public's expense.

Lean and Peisley were about to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in a settlement with the state government before police unraveled the plot.

Detectives were suspicious of the couple by the spring of 2014 and came up with a plan to let the death threats themselves speak the truth. They sneaked into the couple's apartment and found some blank envelopes and papers, the Advertiser reported. The police marked them with invisible ink and left.

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A week later, the couple reported another letter full of threats and expletives — “You fat … coconuts … we've still got our eye on you and the kids.” Police put the paper under a UV light. Their secret mark shone through.

Years of sympathy and affection crumbled upon the couple's arrest. They were indicted on nearly 50 counts of deception, and the details of their scam were aired in a courtroom.

They denied everything at first, insisting their tormentor was still out there. “I wouldn’t send this sort of thing to my children,” Lean told the jury, according to the Advertiser.

But as the case stretched into 2016 — with handwriting analysis, fingerprints and DNA joining invisible ink as state evidence, the Advertiser reported — the couple's unity frayed. They “blamed each other, laying bare their marital problems and health issues during the trial,” the Advertiser wrote in November, when the couple was found guilty.

Lean said their marriage had been “plagued by infidelity” — volunteering that Peisley had used their son's Facebook account to look for sex.

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Peisley countered that the plot was all Lean's idea, Adelaide ABC News reported. “He had no idea” the letters were fake at first, his lawyer said, and later played only a “subservient” role in the scheme.

With their sentences still pending, the couple and the community they disrupted have had time to reflect.

Lean had once been a “strong, intelligent and active member of the Aboriginal community,” a government official told a court in December, speaking on behalf of her former co-workers. “Some still find it difficult to believe that they would cause so much harm to their children,” the victims' rights commissioner said, according to the Advertiser.

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Lean's friends testified this month in an effort to let her serve her sentence at her home. One called her “an inspirational mother,” Adelaide ABC reported.

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Meanwhile, the Australian Associated Press reported this week, Peisley has offered to give up any hope of home detention and go to prison immediately — if it improves the chances that his wife can stay home with their children.