{"id":116751,"date":"2025-11-04T03:32:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T03:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/116751\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T03:32:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T03:32:15","slug":"auckland-businessman-hun-min-im-jailed-for-attempted-multi-million-dollar-covid-19-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/116751\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland businessman Hun Min Im jailed for attempted multi-million dollar Covid-19 fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"In the Auckland District Court, Im was sentenced to four years and four and a half months\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Serious Fraud Office (SFO) director Karen Chang said Im\u2019s offending was a \u201cdeliberate abuse of public money\u201d intended to support people and businesses during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIm created a complex web of fake companies and forged documents to exploit support schemes designed to help struggling businesses and families.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe stole the personal information of tenants and jobseekers to make his fraud appear legitimate. The money he obtained was used to fund his lifestyle, including purchasing a luxury vehicle and apartment.\u201d <\/p>\n
The case was referred to the SFO by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) following its own inquiries. <\/p>\n
The investigation later uncovered suspected fraud across multiple government agencies. <\/p>\n
George Van Ooyen, MSD group general manager, said Im took advantage of a high-trust system. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe scale of his actions shows a disregard for the wider community and people who were feeling genuine hardship at that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue working closely with other government agencies to investigate these cases and expect further prosecutions to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen and subscribe to the Today in Business<\/a> podcast \u2013 the top headlines from the NZ Herald business team summarised and delivered by an AI voice as an easily digestible recap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Auckland District Court, Im was sentenced to four years and four and a half months\u2019 imprisonment.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34309,5765,51,1558,6255,2741,81317,7011,2082,3011,3561,266,42,82852,31989,14641,1132,82853,130,82854,43,59860,1886,131,210,40,38,41,39,82855,1530],"class_list":["post-116751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-34309","tag-attempted","tag-auckland","tag-been","tag-businessman","tag-claim","tag-covid19","tag-dollar","tag-for","tag-four","tag-fraud","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-hun","tag-im","tag-jailed","tag-million","tag-min","tag-more","tag-multimillion","tag-news","tag-schemes","tag-support","tag-than","tag-through","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-various","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}