Conman escapes prison recall
A conman jailed for fraud and stealing $300,000 from a woman he had met on Tinder, was on a different dating app weeks after he was released from prison on parole.
Andrew WC Tonks Thomson was sentenced to 28 months jail last year for fraud and stealing from Glenorchy woman Emma Ferris, after the pair met on
Tinder and started dating.
She was shocked to learn this week that he had been allowed to stay in the community despite almost immediately repeating similar behaviour to when he met her.
‘‘It’s very hard to understand what the justice system is doing here... are there no consequences for his actions? That man is still out there hurting people.’’
A Parole Board decision says Thomson was released on January 11 with conditions including not to possess or use electronic devices, unless approved by Probation Services, and to disclose details of any intimate relationship.
A day later he was given approval to possess and use an Apple iPhone X to maintain contact with his probation officer, as well as friends and family in Australia.
On January 26 he downloaded dating app Bumble and contacted a woman.
They went on a date, and he told her he was involved in a $40 million house build in Queenstown, had considerable assets and was involved in a multimillion dollar building in Sydney.
The woman contacted the Sunday Star-Times after reading of similar claims he made to
Ferris before conning her out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Parole Board then met on April 1 to consider recalling Thomson to prison.
Its written decision says that his counsel claimed that though he fell into a pattern of dishonesty, his intention had been friendship, and he had not intentionally breached his parole conditions.
In a letter to the board he compared his situation to an alcoholic or gambler being released from rehabilitation into Las Vegas.
‘‘Mr Thomson’s main concern
with his backstory appears to be that he felt unable to be honest in any new relationship because the relationship would then stop, and he would become more isolated,’’ the decision says.
Thomson was living in Auckland where he had a job and his employer knew of his background.
The board decided he posed an undue risk in the community, but the risk could be mitigated by special conditions including having a probation officer monitor any electronic devices and to reappear before the board in July.
Ferris said she thought the decision was an April Fool’s joke.
‘‘If he’s like any good teenager, he’ll be able to work around those conditions. There’s always ways of deceiving them, and he’s very good at deception and lies.’’
Thomson had a history of fraud before he met Ferris, and he had
immediately fallen back into the same patterns, she said.
‘‘Yet I haven’t seen any evidence that if he repeats his behaviours he will go back to jail and have consequences. It just makes it easier for him to offend again.’’
She felt frustrated at a ‘‘broken’’ justice system. It was almost two years since Thomson was arrested for offending against Ferris, and last week was the first time she was referred to Victim Support.
In the meantime she had negotiated the court process with little guidance, learned about his release from prison from a journalist and alerted police to his reoffending after being contacted by another journalist.
The courts reduced the amount of reparation he was to pay her from $63,000 to $5000 because of his inability to repay the money.