Home detention for pokie fraud
A Nelson businessman who helped deceive gambling authorities has been sentenced to the maximum period of home detention.
Paul Anthony Max, 60, a bar owner and operator of Nelson, was found guilty of three charges of fraudulently obtaining gambling licences for three venues.
The deceit was that he held shares in bars in Stokes Valley, Nelson, and Palmerston North, which concealed that Michael Joseph O’Brien was the ‘‘true owner’’ of the venues in 2009 and 2010.
But a judge at the High Court in Wellington on Thursday said Max had not known that O’Brien in effect also controlled a trust that decided grants for community groups and that O’Brien got money out the ‘‘back end’’.
O’Brien, 58, was jailed for four and a half years on July 13. On Thursday Max was sentenced to 12 months’ home detention.
O’Brien, a horse trainer and bar owner of Blenheim, had wanted to set up an organisation to own pokie machines and place them in bars and clubs, and decide which community organisations would get the profits. Through Max he also owned some of the bars and clubs. In that way he was able to influence, if not direct, the making of grants to racing clubs.
However, Internal Affairs considered O’Brien an unsuitable person to be involved in the gambling industry so O’Brien set about deceiving the department.
O’Brien had been making more than $1m a year charging racing clubs to ‘‘lobby’’ for grants for them. His bill was usually onethird what they later received in grants.
But Justice Robert Dobson said Max did not know know about O’Brien charging racing clubs to procure grants for them. But if Max thought that O’Brien was the one cheating the regulatory system then he was fooling himself, the judge said.
Nine letters supporting Max were sent to the court. The judge said he was troubled that some of the writers seemed to treat what Max had done as a minor error of judgment.
The court heard that being convicted had a devastating effect on Max, and the six weeks he spent in custody since being found guilty was shattering for him.
Another man, Kevin Martin Coffey, 60, was also earlier sentenced to 12 months’ home detention, on one charge of making false representations to deceive Internal Affairs. Coffey had previously been an Internal Affairs gambling inspector.
The court was told O’Brien and Coffey have both filed appeals.