A Tauranga motor vehicle trader agreed to buy back a car sold by his company after being convicted of tampering with its odometer in the first successful prosecution of its kind.<\/p>\n
Sachinthaka Nagasinghe, sole director of Sachis Holdings Ltd, trading as Carporium, was ordered by the Tauranga District Court this week to pay $1000 reparation for emotional harm. His company was fined $5000.<\/p>\n
The case centred on a Toyota RAV4 that Carporium bought at an Auckland car auction in December 2023, where its odometer read 150,031km.<\/p>\n
By the time the company sold the car three months later, the odometer showed 119,244km, a discrepancy of more than 30,000km.<\/p>\n
When the car’s new owner took it for a scheduled service in May 2026, technicians noticed the odometer reading didn’t match the vehicle’s service history and referred the concern to the Registrar of Motor Vehicle Traders through NZTA.<\/p>\n
This triggered an investigation by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment which confirmed the odometer had been tampered with.<\/p>\n
Nagasinghe faced two charges under the Motor Vehicle Sales Act 2003: One for tampering with an odometer without reasonable excuse, and another for aiding and abetting his company in the offending. <\/p>\n
Ahead of sentencing, he agreed to buy back the vehicle for $24,000, matching its original sale price.<\/p>\n
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment national manager of occupational regulation Bevan Yee said the prosecution sent a clear signal to the industry that deceptive practices would not be tolerated.<\/p>\n
“Accurate vehicle information is fundamental to fair trading. When odometer readings are altered, consumers can end up paying more for a vehicle than it is worth and may be misled about its safety, reliability and maintenance needs,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Most traders do the right thing and deserve to operate in a marketplace where unlawful behaviour is identified and addressed. MBIE will continue to take enforcement action where conduct undermines consumer confidence and damages the reputation of the industry,”<\/p>\n
Under the Motor Vehicle Sales Act 2003, the maximum penalty for the most serious offences is $200,000 for a company and $50,000 for an individual. The Registrar can also issue infringement notices carrying an instant $500 fine for lesser breaches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tauranga motor vehicle trader agreed to buy back a car sold by his company after being convicted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,11328,61,60,233773],"class_list":["post-552426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tauranga-bay-of-plenty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}