Jail for plotter of $6.9m pokie fraud

Frances Cook

Marlborough racing identity Michael O’Brien has been sentenced to four years and six months in prison for gambling machine frauds said to have netted him $6.9 million.

The 58-year-old was yesterday sentenced in the High Court at Wellington with Kevin Coffey, 60, who received 12 months’ home detention for his lesser role in the scheme.

Crown lawyer Grant Burston said O’Brien’s “selfish and greedy” offending netted him millions over several years.

The court heard that O’Brien was a key figure for both poker machine venues and racing clubs wanting grants from the pokies.

“He directed the trusts’ grants application process,” Burston said.

“Michael O’Brien was running a dishonest scheme for which he received a backhander of a third of the grants given out while he was running the scheme.

“Mr O’Brien’s offending was selfish and greedy. The racing clubs believed they had no other choice but to pay him a third funding, if they were to get any grant money at all.”

Justice Robert Dobson said: “The tone of Mr O’Brien throughout suggests that he was dismissive of the SFO [Serious Fraud Office] and of their rules. [The offending] involved persistence and determined deception of a government agency that is charged with regulating a business. It is conduct that needs to be denounced in the strongest terms, and deterred in the strongest terms the law allows.”

Coffey, a former Internal Affairs gambling inspector, received 12 months home detention on the lesser charge of making false representations to deceive the Department of Internal Affairs.

A third man found guilty in the scheme, Nelson bar owner Paul Max, 60, will be sentenced on July 27.