Fijian fraudsters fleece NZ finance firm
It may have seemed like they had found a “golden goose”, but a Fijian couple who systematically ripped off more than $300,000 from a Hamilton, New Zealand, local finance company found their cunning plan quickly became a dead duck of substandard deception.
Sanita Devi Singh, 39, and Vimlesh Vikash Chand, 39, were sentenced to nine months and 11 months of home detention respectively when they appeared in the Hamilton District Court on four charges each of causing loss by deception.
Singh had pleaded guilty to the charges while Chand was found guilty by a jury following a trial presided over by Judge Robert Spear, who sentenced the pair on Friday.
The couple were running a business importing goods, that they then sold to other businesses in the local Indian community, when they began employing the services of a small debt factoring company that they decided to fleece. Debt factoring is a process used by many firms of selling unpaid customer invoices, known as accounts receivable, to a debt factoring provider or “factor.” The factor owns the debt and chases payment from the customer. The invoices Singh and Chand submitted to their victims were frequently fictional, and the invoice money they obtained was totally unearned.
From August 2015 to February 2016, when their duplicity was discovered, the couple and two accomplices from their home in Fiji - Ashaad Hussain and Mohammed Masroof Kahn - made just over $300,000 in illegally-obtained invoice funds.
Hussain and Kahn, who had supposedly been sold goods that Singh and Chand had imported, all lied to the debt factoring firm, which paid them the money in good faith - a “golden goose” in the words of Judge Spear, but one that could only produce eggs for a limited time.
Eventually, the deception was uncovered when Singh’s signature was spotted on an invoice supposedly from one of their customers. Despite this, the couple continued to lie to the factoring providers and, later, the police. Their fraud had plunged their victims into financial and emotional turmoil, the judge said.
“This has been a nightmare for them that’s been caused by you and your greed.”
Hussain and Kahn plead guilty and were each sentenced to six months of community detention. While Singh admitted her wrongdoing two weeks before going to trial, Chand maintained his claims to innocence and declared it was all his wife’s idea.
“I reject that completely,” said the judge. “I suspect that by having Singh plead guilty, you hoped to escape the blame.
“This was reprehensible offending ... a fraud scheme that would never have gone undetected. It demonstrates how unsophisticated and naive the two of you were. “I’m in no doubt that the two of you have learned a very, very hard lesson.”
Their sentencing was delayed more than once to allow the couple - who now live in Papakura to obtain funds to pay back their victims the outstanding amount of $191,823 they still owed, which Judge Spear ordered be paid at no less than $4000 per month. A family home in Fiji is now on the market and if this was sold, and the reparation paid in full, the judge said he would entertain a possible reduction in their home detention time.