Trade Me swindler appealing conviction

CHRISTCHURCH: A former Australian TV presenter jailed for inventing a ‘‘cruel lie’’ about a dying child to con Trade Me buyers out of $35,000 is appealing her conviction, relying on 13yearold phone records.

Simone Anne Wright, who also went by Simone Williams and Smith, denied making up stories of a terminally ill son being cared for at Auckland’s Starship Hospital to sell motorbikes, a spa bath and other items worth thousands of dollars on Trade Me.

A court heard how adverts surfaced on Trade Me in 2008 for a Kawasaki motorcycle which said, ‘‘Our son has cancer and can no longer ride his pride and joy’’.

The Crown alleged the sick child was fictitious and made up to ‘‘engender trust and sympathy’’.

Wright said she had nothing to do with the fake trades — and blamed former husband Paul James Bennett, who last July was jailed for more than three years after admitting a series of frauds worth $580,000.

She claimed he controlled everything.

But after a judgealone trial in the Christchurch District Court last year, she was found guilty on all seven charges of obtaining by deception.

In finding her guilty, Judge Paul Kellar said it ‘‘strains credibility to breaking point’’ that Wright did not know what was going on.

He called it ‘‘brazen, callous and cynical’’ offending and sentenced her to one year and five months with six months of postrelease conditions and further special conditions.

Now, Wright is appealing against her conviction, arguing crucial phone records that were available to her and her counsel were ‘‘effectively overlooked’’ and could have helped prove her innocence.

During the district court trial, a duped buyer of a motorcycle on Trade Me said he had tried to ring the seller and had spoken to a woman called ‘‘Susan’’.

When he was asked if it could have been a man posing as a woman, the victim laughed and said, ‘‘Not a chance’’.

The judge concluded that ‘‘Susan’’ was actually Simone Wright and said the phone call was a key piece of evidence.

At a hearing in the High Court at Christchurch yesterday before Justice Cameron Mander, Wright, through her new counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner, said there were no such phone calls.

Pointing to the 2008 phone records, Wright claimed the call she is alleged to have answered was in fact a voicemail.

‘‘If she was alert to the phone records, she would’ve told her lawyer to run her case on that basis,’’ Ms SaundersonWarner said, adding that much of the case against Wright was of a circumstantial nature.

Crown prosecutor Jamie Eng yesterday called Wright’s appeal an ‘‘opportunistic reconstruction’’ of the facts, saying Wright was trying to find errors during her trial when there were none.

Justice Cameron Mander reserved his decision. —