Former PI sentenced for buying ‘hot’ fashion

A judge has ordered home detention for a former private investigator who claimed she was tricked into buying stolen designer clothing soon after the high-profile burglary of Dame Trelise Cooper’s Auckland head office.

Kathy Yu-jen Stephens, 46, returned to Auckland District Court yesterday for sentencing, just over nine months after she was found guilty of receiving more than $1000 of stolen property.

“I am not in the least convinced you were an innocent party who was taken advantage of,” Judge Nevin Dawson said yesterday.

Stephens, a fashion aficionado, once had a cake business called Vanilla Coco, which she acknowledged “could” have been inspired by Coco Chanel. She told jurors that acquaintance Nicholas James Bush showed up at her doorstep late one night with two suitcases full of high-end fashion.

Stephens said she paid Bush $600 cash for some items that night, but over five weeks gave him $3000 to $4000 worth of free rent and her own clothing that he then resold.

She said Bush had said his girlfriend kicked him out, and he grabbed the suitcases as he left. But prosecutors suggested the story should have been a red flag — indicating that the clothing was at least stolen from Bush’s girlfriend.

Police executed a search warrant at Stephens’ Onehunga home in November 2020, recovering 18 items of stolen clothing that they valued at about $12,200.

At trial, Stephens said she had no idea the Trelise Cooper office had been burgled and didn’t know the items at her house were stolen.

“Yeah, maybe,” she later responded under cross-examination as prosecutor Frances Gourlay asked her if the situation seemed too good to be true.

“I guess. I can’t remember.” Bush, a former television industry worker, was sentenced in February to two years and five months’ jail after admitting the burglary, in which about 2000 high-fashion clothing items were pilfered, including the designer’s entire 2021 spring and summer samples. The heist resulted in an estimated loss to Cooper of roughly $750,000.

Many of the items were never recovered.

Judge Dawson handed Stephens seven months’ home detention.