Two months added to fraudster’s prison time
Joanne Harrison, who was convicted of stealing $726,000 from the Ministry of Transport, has had two months’ jail time added to her sentence after being convicted on three charges of benefit fraud.
Harrison appeared in the Kaikohe District Court via audio-visual link yesterday from the Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility. Judge Simon Maude sentenced her to two months’ jail for two charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage and one of obtaining a benefit by deceit.
The sentence would be served cumulative to the three years and seven month sentence handed down in February for stealing $726,000 from the ministry.
Harrison pleaded guilty to the three benefit fraud charges in October. In total, she received just over $6400 she was not entitled to through the Domestic Purposes Benefit. The offending occurred between December 2008 and April 2009.
The judge said he had to take into account the existing sentence before deciding a two month sentence was appropriate.
He said there were no mitigating factors. Harrison had deliberately falsified documents to the Ministry of Social Development.
The benefit fraud was detected in August, after information was shared between government agencies, Ministry of Social Development lawyer Sheryl Manning said.
While the amount Harrison had obtained was not significant compared with other benefit fraud offending, there were no mitigating factors, Manning said.
Harrison falsified a wage verification slip from the Department of Corrections, where she worked at the time, which stated she was earning $482 a week. She was in fact earning $1842 a week.
When interviewed in August about the benefit fraud, Harrison said she had made a mistake.
Harrison’s lawyer Nathan Bourke said his client had been described as a model prisoner in a probation report, and had completed a number of courses during her jail term.