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SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

Bankrupt insurance company boss gets four-and-a-half years jail for fraud

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GRANT MALCOLM HERBERT – former insurance company boss – and now a bankrupt – has been jailed for four years and six months after his conviction last month on 24 fraud charges.

Insurance broker Grant Herbert leaves the Auckland District Court. Photo / Dean Purcell

Grant Malcolm Herbert was sentenced in the Auckland District Court. [Photo credit / Dean Purcell. NZ Herald]

Herbert was owner and managing director from 1991 of insurance brokerage Herbert Insurance Group, which collapsed in March 2011.

An investigation by the Serious Fraud Office found that he had received premiums from clients but failed to forward about $2.5 million of it to insurers, having some customers uninsured, the court heard. [Read more…]

Former SCF director – Edward Sullivan – found guilty of fraud in relation to $1.58B company collapse

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A former director of South Canterbury Finance (SCF) has been found guilty of what has been billed the “biggest fraud in New Zealand’s history”, in relation to the company’s $1.58 billion collapse in 2010. In the High Court at Timaru this morning, Edward Sullivan, aged 72, a former lawyer, was found guilty of five of the nine charges he faced. He has been remanded on bail  and will face sentencing on 12 December 2014.

Edward Sullivan SCF director

Photo: Stuff News: Edward Sullivan (far left)

Justice Heath criticised the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into the company’s collapse, stating there might have been documents that showed transactions were being concealed but the “deficiencies in the investigation by the SFO office meant that evidence did not exist.”

Another CFC former director Bob White, 70, and former chief executive, accountant Lachie McLeod, 50, were found Not guilty on ALL counts.

The men faced a total of 18 charges under the Crimes Act, including theft by a person in a special relationship, obtaining by deception, false statements by the promoter of a company, and false accounting – each carrying maximum penalties ranging from seven to 10 years’ jail.

Full story: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10612568/SCF-trial-has-one-guilty-two-not-guilty-verdicts

[Read more…]

Dunedin lawyer admits defrauding clients of $2.8m

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A retired Dunedin lawyer has admitted misappropriating investments of $2.8 million from mainly elderly clients in what appears to have the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.

The Serious Fraud Office will be pressing for a starting point of eight years’ jail when his sentencing is considered, and he was told today that home detention was not an option.

Losses caused by 79-year-old John David Milne totalled about $2.3 million, Serious Fraud Office prosecutor Rachel Reed told the Christchurch District Court today when Milne pleaded guilty to 34 charges. [Read more…]

David Ross, convicted fraudster, has $725,000 house waiting for him outside prison

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Today a front page Dominion Post report has called into question an appeal submission by jailed fraudster David Ross‘s lawyer, Gary Turkington, against his client’s sentence of a minimum parole period of five years five months as being “unreasonably crushing” and “manifestly excessive”. Turkington, presenting his case to three Court Judges [see note. 1], questioning the point of such a lengthy minimum term imposed by District Court Judge Denys Barry at Ross’s sentencing on 15 November 2013, for a man in his “twilight years”, and Ross, 64, dwelling without hope in prison. “He’ll emerge with nothing”, he said, as he sought a minimum non-parole period of four years.

The Dompost report has highlighted the fact that Ross’s wife, Jillian Elizabeth Ross, who was jointly indebted with him to Ross Asset Management Ltd (RAM) for $3.49 m, when the company collapsed, has recently bought a four-bedroom two bathroom Lower Hutt home with her brother for $725,00, after she pocketed nearly $900,000 from the sale of the family’s former $2.2m mansion at 105 Woburn Rd, Lower Hutt. [Read more…]

E-Gas managers jailed over fraud

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The former managers of retail gas supplier E-Gas have been imprisoned for three years, and 3-1/2 years respectively, for fraud of at least $9.75 million.

Sydney Lio John Hunt, 46, and Ronald Peter Rosenberg, 73, were last month found guilty on multimillion-dollar fraud charges for under-reporting the amount of gas supplied to customers.

Wellington District Court judge Bruce Davidson today sentenced Hunt to 3-1/2 years’ jail, and Rosenberg to three years.

Rosenberg was also ordered to pay $400,000 reparation within 28 days.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) alleged during the month-long trial that E-Gas under-reported consumption by about 950,000 gigajoules, worth about $8.7m, and penalties were avoided to the value of about $8.6m between May 2003 and October 2008.

To see full story published 30/05/14 go to:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10099038/Jail-terms-for-E-Gas-managers