Using union credit cards and fake invoices, Belan spent funds on cruises, rentals, motor vehicles, botox treatments and tattoos when he was state secretary of the National Union of Workers, magistrate Elizabeth Ellis said on Monday.

"The motive was personal greed, ingratiating himself to others including family members, and a childish desire to have trinkets such as motorcycles," she said in Parramatta Local Court.

The magistrate jailed Belan, now 47, for four years with a non-parole period of three years for defrauding the union of more than $650,000 between 2010 and 2015.

In March, she found him guilty of more than 50 charges, most of them for dishonestly obtaining financial advantage. Belan had admitted to two further charges towards the end of his nine-day hearing.

Ms Ellis said Belan set up a "matrix of fraud" to misspend membership payments which likely came from scant spare funds.

"The workers that came under the National Union of Workers included factory workers, storemen, that is those at the lower end of the wage spectrum," the magistrate said.

He was charged in 2016 in response to the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, which heard he used a union credit card to get a leg tattoo of his parents.

His barrister, Anton Duc, during this year's hearing said his client didn't defraud the union of "one cent" and was not involved in any of the conduct he was accused of.

But Belan's niece, former NUW bookkeeper Danielle O'Brien, said he asked her to use branch funds to pay for family holidays, clothes, lap-band surgery for his partner and orthodontic braces for his son.

Ms O'Brien, who has already been sentenced over her involvement, testified that he told her he had a brain tumour.

She believed him for some two years before discovering it wasn't true.

The magistrate on Monday said Belan had shown no remorse or acknowledgement of his crime and intended to appeal his conviction.

He will be eligible for parole in March 2021.

Australian Associated Press