Phone-ploy fraudster netted $50k
Accounts hit using ‘replacement’ SIM card, temporary password
A fraudster stole $50,000 after getting a new SIM card for the victim’s phone number and using it to unlock their bank accounts. Casey John Burtt Smith entered a 2degrees shop in January 2021 and requested a “replacement” SIM card, which gave him control of a phone number belonging to another person.
He then tried to log on to that person’s Westpac bank accounts online, getting the portal to send a temporary password to the compromised phone number.
This gave him access to two accounts belonging to the victim and he made several transfers, obtaining $50,000.
Details of Smith’s fraudulent dealings in that case and several others are included in his unsuccessful bid to have a term of two years and three months in prison reduced by the High Court.
The sentence was imposed by Judge Mina Wharepouri in the Manukau District Court in December last year, in relation to two separate groups of dishonesty offending.
The first related to Smith obtaining, or trying to obtain, thousands of dollars by making dozens of bogus applications to the Ministry of Social Development for Covid-19 wage subsidies or support schemes.
The second was for money laundering and fraudulently accessing other people’s bank accounts and taking money out.
Smith pleaded guilty to a number of charges, some representative, of using a forged document, dishonestly using a document and money laundering.
The High Court decision said that between April 13, 2020, and April 21, 2022, Smith dishonestly submitted 43 applications to the Ministry of Social Development for Covid wage subsidies or support payments.
Nineteen were in his own name and 24 were in the names of other people he did not know, but using their real personal details and Inland Revenue numbers.
Five of the applications were successful and a total of $26,946 was paid into Smith’s bank accounts. The other 38 applications were rejected by MSD. Had they been successful, they would have netted him more than $207,500.
About $14,000 of the money Smith did receive was put into a bank account he opened in the name of another person, but for his own use.
To open that account, Smith used a driving licence taken from a wallet that had been stolen and “doctored” it by putting his own photo on to it.
In January 2021, Smith applied for a loan of nearly $16,000 from Heartland Bank to buy a BMW vehicle. He again used a bogus driving licence in the name of another person and uploaded a selfie video to the bank’s online portal to verify his identity.
Smith was foiled when Heartland Bank contacted the person whose identity he had taken, who said he had not applied for a loan, meaning the bank was able to stop Smith drawing down any funds.
However, the next day, Smith used the same forged driver’s licence to reopen a Westpac bank account belonging to that person.
In June 2021, Smith was sentenced to 12 months of home detention for a number of dishonesty offences.
These involved using stolen credit card and bank account details to make purchases and buy overseas currency and gift cards, benefiting to the tune of $39,472.
He used another fraudulent driving licence to book a room in a motel.
That offending was separate to the frauds that earned Smith the jail term in December last year. But he cited it when he appealed his prison sentence, saying the judge had included in the jail term crimes for which he had already served home detention.
High Court Justice Andrew Becroft said he did not consider that the home detention sentence followed by the prison sentence, when added together, produced a sentencing result that was disproportionate to Smith’s offending as a whole.
Smith also argued Judge Wharepouri had been wrong to say his offending was a “breach of trust” in the context of the Covid-19 subsidy scheme. A “breach of trust” usually relates to someone abusing a position of trust or authority in relation to a particular victim.
Justice Becroft said any deliberate fraud in the “high-trust” Covid subsidy situation was “quintessentially a breach of trust”. He dismissed Smith’s appeal against his jail sentence.