Transport Ministry fraudster jailed
A Ministry of Transport staffer who stole more than $725,000 to pay off credit cards and her mortgage has been jailed.
Joanne Harrison, also known as Joanne Sharp, a former senior manager at the ministry, admitted to three representative charges of dishonestly using a document last November.
Harrison used invoices to pay three entities linked in offending which spanned three-and-a-half years.
The 50-year-old appeared in the Manukau District Court yesterday, where Judge Sanjay Patel sentenced her to three years and seven months in jail.
The court heard it was the second time she had been before the courts on this type of offending, having a decade earlier been convicted on similar charges.
An investigation was launched by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) last year after Harrison left the country for Canada.
SFO prosecutor Sarah Allen said no reparation was sought because of separate civil action which had been taken to recover assets linked to Harrison.
But she said little discount should be given for any remorse, because Harrison had ‘‘frustrated’’ the civil action.
Allen said the largest of the assets, a property in Waimate North, near the Bay of Islands, had been purchased solely by Harrison in 2008.
By 2012, there was still $364,000 owing on the house, but by August 2015, it had been paid off.
The SFO said Harrison’s offending occurred between November, 2012, and March, 2016, and after fraudulent invoices were identified a month later, she left the country.
A week after doing so, she transferred the ownership of the property entirely to her husband, Patrick Sharp.
Allen said Harrison was supporting Sharp’s claim to his half-share in that property in the civil dispute, and had claimed she had been separated from Sharp for eight years.
But in a message to a friend Harrison had said she would have to refer to Sharp as her ‘‘expartner’’, and a Canadian doctor who the pair had visited ‘‘strongly suggested’’ they were a couple.
‘‘Now she says he’s not her husband and hasn’t been for eight years,’’ Allen said. ‘‘If any discount is made, it should be very modest.’’
Defence lawyer Nathan Bourke said Harrison had shown genuine remorse in coming back to the country to confront the charges, as well as attempting to access her KiwiSaver fund to pay reparations.
He said the focus should not be on the dynamics of who owned the house prior to the charges, as Harrison had simply acknowledged Sharp had an interest in the property.
‘‘She reached effectively her rock bottom. She’s reached this point; she’s lost everything.’’
Judge Patel said there was ‘‘clearly premeditation’’ to Harrison’s offending, with the majority of the funds used to pay off personal credit cards and the home loan in her name.
But he said she appeared to have greater insight into her offending, and did not find there was enough evidence to suggest she was endeavouring to frustrate the civil proceedings.
He noted it was the second time she had been before the courts for this type of offending, and said he hoped she would not do it again.
‘‘There’s been clear expressions of remorse. I truly hope this is in a genuine effort.’’