A Wellington woman has been sentenced to 20 months in prison after she used her own name and those of 10 others, including dead people, to fraudulently obtain $28,118 and attempt to obtain a further $200,000 through the Covid-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme.
Sariah Wehipeihana pleaded guilty in January last year to two representative charges of dishonestly using a document related to five successful wage subsidy applications and a further 27 unsuccessful applications.
She was sentenced at Wellington District Court on February 5.
All the applications were submitted between April and June 2020.
She used her own name and the names of 10 others in the applications.
This included individuals unaware their identifies were being used, and in some cases, the names of dead people.
The successful applications resulted in a total of $28,118.40 being paid into bank accounts controlled by Wehipeihana, with the funds then used for personal expenses, including shopping and online gambling.
A reparation order was sought, but no repayments had been made to date.
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) said 56 people had now been sentenced in wage subsidy fraud cases, with another 48 still before the courts. More than $830 million in wage subsidies had been repaid since the scheme began.