Fraudster also admits benefit swindling
Joanne Harrison, a former senior manager convicted of stealing $726,000 from the Ministry of Transport, has pleaded guilty to three charges of benefit fraud.
Harrison is serving three years and seven months in jail for fleecing the Crown of $726,000 after her complex web of deception was unravelled.
Yesterday, she entered guilty pleas at the Kaikohe District Court to two charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage and one charge of obtaining a benefit by deceit.
Ministry of Social Development lawyer Sheryl Manning said the ministry was seeking a cumulative sentence in relation to the charges.
Manning said Harrison stated she was earning $482 gross income a week, to claim a Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB), when in fact she was earning $1842 a week in gross income.
In total Harrison, also known as Joanne Sharp and Joanne Sidebottom, claimed $6444.13 from the benefit she was not entitled to.
Manning said Harrison falsified a wage verification slip from the Department of Corrections, where she worked at the time of the offending, to obtain the benefit.
Harrison appeared at the Kaikohe District Court via audiovisual link yesterday from the Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility.
Harrison is due to be sentenced on December 6 on the benefit fraud charges, where she will appear in the Kaikohe District Court via audio-link at her request. The charges come with a maximum prison sentence of seven years.
She first appeared on the benefit fraud charges in September.
Harrison was sentenced in February on charges related to her Ministry of Transport offending. The charges were laid by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
The benefit fraud offending occurred in Kerikeri between December 8, 2008 and April 9, 2009. A request was made for the matter to be transferred to the New Plymouth District Court.
However, Judge Greg Davis said there was a long-standing principle that sentencing should occur where the offending took place.
Harrison has been in custody since August 2016. The Parole Board declined an application for parole on October 4, with her next appearance before the board set for March 2018.
Harrison used fake names, bogus entities and gifts to colleagues to deflect attention from her previous fraud, amounting to over $725,000.
In March, the Ministry of Transport released documents showing Harrison was first questioned about dubious contracts at least as far back as May 2014.
But she batted away queries on a $123,000 payment, claiming a ‘‘genuine misunderstanding’’ about contracting policy, as she spun what the ministry called a ‘‘web of deception’’.
She was the subject of a fraud investigation in Australia before landing a job at the ministry.