Gambling addict took millions from victims
Joshua Paul Johnston picked wealthy victims, convinced them to make investments, then took their money to feed his gambling addiction.
All up, he gambled away more than $2 million online – so addicted that even when caught he offended again while on bail awaiting sentencing for fraud.
The 35-year-old from Khandallah, Wellington, had been gambling on sports online ‘‘hourly’’ according to his lawyer.
Yesterday, Wellington District Court judge Jan Kelly jailed him for five years.
Johnston had every advantage, a loving and supportive family, good education with a bachelor of accounting and economics, as well as sporting interests.
The judge said in 2017 he began running a ponzi scheme. He took money from one victim to pay others but the rest was gambled away. He took $3,416,965 from them. Some was repaid leaving $2,054,666 outstanding.
Johnston showed three victims a doctored email exchange about interest in his fictitious investment scheme and screen shots of bank deposits when in reality there were no clients, the judge said
Three of the victims had lost their life savings and all were under severe stress from the frauds, Kelly said, labelling it sustained offending with a degree of sophistication and premeditation.
Johnston pleaded guilty in the middle of last year and sentencing was put off to allow restorative justice meetings to take place.
But in December he began offending again, convincing another victim to pay him $22,000 which was also used in gambling.
He has now pleaded guilty to 10 charges of obtaining by deception.
The names of the victims are permanently suppressed.
A psychiatric report said his offending was driven by a severe gambling disorder, even though he knew it was wrong.
The judge said in the reports before the court Johnston felt the loss was not so bad because the victims were wealthy, which made the deception easy.
She said Johnston had not benefited financially from the offending but was concerned he was minimising the effect on the victims because he saw them as rich.
The judge refused to impose a minimum non-parole period or reparation, saying he was unable to pay anything back.
Defence lawyer Mike Antunovic said Johnston struggled with gambling for some time.
‘‘His life has been dominated by the need to gamble almost on daily, hourly basis for most of his time,’’ he said.
The gambling had not made him happy and wealthy and he was now in prison and had nothing.
Antunovic told the judge that another set of charges from December last year had been a relapse.
Antunovic said it was an attempt to find some funds to offer reparation, driven by the gambling disorder.
‘‘His life has been dominated by the need to gamble.’’ Defence lawyer Mike Antunovic