Home detention for Po¯keno ‘piranha’
Victims of a property entrepreneur’s attempts to make money at their expense are dismayed at the light sentence she received, writes Steve Kilgallon.
A property developer involved in a huge housing scheme potentially worth up to $1 billion, who demanded illegal cash payments from her co-investors, has escaped jail.
Judge Peter Rollo told Xiaoling ‘‘Annie’’ Chen her offending had been motivated by greed – but spared her prison time after the court heard she’d suffered a ‘‘pitiful’’ decade including depression, a marriage break-up, and loss of face in the Auckland Chinese community because of her marital strife.
The sentence left those affected disappointed. Former coinvestor Ang ‘‘Annie’’ Yip, who was tricked into giving Chen $100,000, approached Crown counsel Linda Sullivan to ask why she had not received a letter of apology tabled by Chen in her mitigating submissions.
Real estate agent Eric Chase, who had not known Chen was using his name to extract money from her victims, also approached Chen’s family outside the Manukau District Court to express his dismay. Chase called Chen a ‘‘piranha’’ who preyed on her fellow investors.
It was Chase who first conceived of the giant land development, worth in his estimation some $1b and producing more than 1500 homes, to the west of the growing Waikato town of Po¯ keno.
He approached the owners of rural sections, wanting to package them together to be rezoned for urban use and on-sold to a house builder. Believing the best investment potential came from the Chinese community, he turned to property entrepreneur Chen.
Chen brought in Yip and Zhenlin ‘‘Robert’’ Luo as partners on various land parcels. Yip and Luo paid the deposits, agreed to cover re-zoning and consent costs, and complete the settlements in return for shareholdings of between 45 and 50 per cent, with their investments to be repaid, plus interest, once the land was on-sold. Chen fronted no money, but it was her name on the sale and purchase agreements.
But Chen demanded extra payments in cash, of $100,000 per
deal, totalling $600,000. Both Luo and Yip testified that she’d told them the money was for Chase to oil the wheels of the deal, a payment which would have been illegal had he taken it.
But Chase knew nothing of the payments, and prompted a police investigation after learning of the scheme. He helped secure the return of Yip’s $100,000, with costs and interest, and Chen later returned Luo’s $500,000, plus interest, after being found guilty by Judge Rollo following a trial last December.
Chen’s defence counsel, John Billington QC, said the fact the money had all been repaid was ‘‘rather unique . . . not often seen in cases of fraud’’.
Billington told the court: ‘‘You couldn’t find a less appropriate case for imprisonment’’, arguing the offending was neither complex
nor sophisticated. He said the offending was the ‘‘culmination of 10 years of a rather pitiful series of events which affected the offending’’.
While Billington successfully argued for the contents of a cultural report, a psychiatric report, and letters from Chen, her parents, a daughter, and various referees, to be suppressed, in court he pointed to Chen’s ongoing diagnosed depression, the stress of the breakdown of her marriage and desire to be financially independent of her estranged husband, and the significant shame marital breakdown brought on women in the Chinese community.
Sullivan, for the Crown, argued for imprisonment, with a sentencing start point of between 42 months and four years, and an end term above the two-year threshold for home detention. She argued the apology letter from Chen ‘‘seems to contain pity for herself and the situation her family is facing rather than any insight into the effect on the victims’’, echoing a pre-sentence report. Chen’s mental health wasn’t a factor in her offending.
After applying various discounts, Judge Rollo arrived at a sentence of nine months’ home detention and 150 hours’ community service. Chen, who kept her head bowed throughout the sentencing, nodded to the judge and thanked him. Outside, surrounded by a large group of family, she refused to comment.
Yip said she was disappointed at the verdict: ‘‘I think $600,000 is a big-money scam . . . that’s a lot of money . . . I didn’t get any apology from her and her father was looking at me like I was the bad person’’.
Chase said he had told Chen’s parents he was sorry they had to suffer their daughter’s offending. ‘‘She used my name to perpetrate a crime on other people which has cost me four years of my life. To put it mildly, I am angry.’’
The verdict isn’t the end of the dispute. A complex civil case remains between Chen, Yip and Luo, and will be heard in the High Court at Auckland in August.
Chase has always argued that Chen intended to keep the most profitable parts of the development herself, leaving her coinvestors to smaller, more expensive blocks.
Chen has always denied any plan to develop the land together, and will rely on a preliminary judgement that the argument that profits would be shared equally was ‘‘weak’’.