Fraudster loses fight to appeal
High-profile benefit fraudster Wayne Patterson’s objection to having his electronic devices monitored has been thrown out by the nation’s highest court, weeks before he becomes a completely free man.
Patterson fleeced the taxpayer of more than $3 million in welfare benefits collected under 100 false identities. The 58-year-old, who is still regarded as having a very high reoffending risk, was last year released from an eight-year, nine-month prison lag.
The Corrections Department had a raft of special conditions imposed to reduce his risk of offending, until his sentence ends in a few weeks, on July 27. One of these conditions banned him from accessing the internet. He successfully appealed this condition to the High Court and was allowed to access the internet.
But Patterson, who lives in Carterton, also objected to two other conditions. One required him to submit any electronic devices to a probation officer for monitoring to ensure compliance with other conditions. The other required him to provide details of all bank accounts and money held by him at all times.
The High Court ruled that these were appropriate conditions given Patterson’s ‘‘extraordinary recidivist proclivities’’.
So Patterson went to the Court of Appeal. The court ruled against him in March, finding that it was not unreasonable and was ‘‘plainly connected to Mr Patterson’s very high reoffending risk’’. Unhappy with that ruling, Patterson applied to the Supreme Court for leave to appeal the Court of Appeal’s decision.
In a judgment made last week the Supreme Court noted that the proposed appeal appeared to claim that special release conditions could not involve actions that interfere with rights conferred under the Bill of Rights. ’’Nothing raised by the applicant suggests that this proposition is seriously arguable and, in this case, because the conditions will have expired before the proposed appeal could be heard, the issue is moot. In those circumstances, the criteria for leave to appeal are not met,’’ the court ruled.
In November last year the Government banked $4 million worth of Apple shares that Patterson had in an Austrian bank. It took the government 10 years to repatriate the funds. Thanks to Patterson’s canny investments, the Crown was soon able to recover more than the full amount he had stolen in the years after his arrest in 2006, including $1m in cash and shares he had deposited in Swiss bank accounts.
But about $215,000 in cash and $810,000 in Apple shares he had deposited in Austrian banks proved trickier to repatriate. Despite the New Zealand courts granting the Solicitor-General a confiscation order for these funds, the Austrian legal system allowed Patterson to engage a governmentfunded lawyer to fight the Crown’s application to recover the funds. Patterson accused the Government of ‘‘legalised theft’’, claiming the amount stolen had already been recovered.
After a 10-year battle that traversed various tiers of the Austrian courts, the Crown was the victor and in November last year it received the shares, which had sky-rocketed in value to $4,035,301.80, and the $136,000 deposited in cash.
Patterson was caught in late 2006 after Kiwibank noticed several accounts were being accessed from just two internet addresses. Police raided his rented Auckland house and found gold bars worth nearly $1m and $865,000 cash in his house and garden. From 2003 to 2006 he used 123 fake identities to steal $3.4m in benefit payments. He was claiming $23,000 a fortnight at his peak. He pleaded guilty to 10 charges of false identity and fraud, and was sent to jail for eight years and nine months in October 2007, to serve a minimum of five years.