{"id":187988,"date":"2025-12-17T09:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/187988\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T09:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:18:08","slug":"businesswoman-sneha-patel-exploited-workers-failed-to-pay-50k-in-wages-entitlements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/187988\/","title":{"rendered":"Businesswoman Sneha Patel exploited workers, failed to pay $50k in wages, entitlements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over eight months in 2018, she hired the victims, who either had temporary work<\/a> visas or no visa at all, and for two of the workers paid them nothing for two months.<\/p>\n

One pregnant female employee who lost her baby while working at Patel\u2019s beauty salon was also made to pay<\/a> her boss back $3212 after being told by a doctor she should take two weeks off work, as she was unable to do any beauty treatments.<\/p>\n

Another employee was paid a month\u2019s wages for working at the Avondale Superette before the payments stopped. He also slept on a single mattress in the back of Patel\u2019s vehicle, before moving it on to the floor of the dairy.<\/p>\n

Patel, 36, was in the Hamilton District Court for sentencing on nine charges laid by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment this afternoon, in the hope of avoiding a jail sentence.<\/p>\n

Despite \u201cextraordinary explanations\u201d to try to justify her offending, which Judge Stephen Clark soon after dubbed \u201cnonsense\u201d, she managed to persuade him that a jail term would be \u201cdisproportionately severe\u201d mainly because of her mental health issues and current \u201chigh-risk pregnancy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The former Taupiri woman, who lives in Hamilton, has been ordered to pay the victims $49,858.96 in reparations, $30,000 of which will be paid tomorrow and the remainder in six months.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m being a good sister\u2019<\/p>\n

One of the victims was unlawfully in New Zealand when employed by Patel, a fact she was aware of.<\/p>\n

She provided him with a vehicle to work in both Hamilton and Auckland and told him before he moved to Auckland that she would provide accommodation. She didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

He typically worked six to seven days a week, 8am to 8pm. After a month, she said she couldn\u2019t pay him anymore because the business was slow and instead said she was \u201cbeing a good sister\u201d by saving his salary to secure a visa.<\/p>\n

The victim who worked at the beauty salon typically worked 16 hours more a week than she was paid, while a third victim didn\u2019t get any pay for the two months working for Patel.<\/p>\n

\u2018Deliberate and sustained\u2019<\/p>\n

MBIE prosecutor Tim Gray said Patel\u2019s offending was \u201cdeliberate, sustained, and commercially motivated\u201d and focused on expanding her business \u201cempire\u201d.<\/p>\n

Patel also had prior knowledge of employment law, having previously complained of her own immigration exploitation.<\/p>\n

The prosecution had also been drawn out. After she initially pleaded guilty in May 2024, she sought to reverse her guilty pleas but was unsuccessful. <\/p>\n

He was also critical of her \u201chollow\u201d remorse letters, in which she said her actions \u201ccontributed\u201d to the offending.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe offending was entirely hers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018She was desperate\u2019<\/p>\n

Counsel Pennymay Symonds said her client had $30,000 to repay the victims immediately and, after being questioned by the judge about paying back extra funds, she agreed.<\/p>\n

Symonds pushed for discounts for Patel\u2019s guilty pleas, previous good character, upbringing and produced a letter from her doctor that confirmed her pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Patel was declared bankrupt in February 2020, to effectively wipe her civil debt, but she had been out of bankruptcy since 2023.<\/p>\n

Her offending came down to \u201cfinancial desperation\u201d, Symonds said.<\/p>\n

\"SnehaSneha Patel, also known as Sejalben Rahulkumar or Sejal Patel, 36, of Hamilton. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n

Judge Clark said she would have to concede there was a commercial benefit involved in Patel\u2019s offending because although her businesses \u201cmay not have thrived\u201d, it helped them stay afloat.<\/p>\n

Symonds agreed but added the expansions were to try to keep the \u201cflailing businesses\u201d alive.<\/p>\n

Patel had also been \u201csignificantly mentally unwell in the years following the offending … which had affected her judgment in facing the offending head on\u201d.<\/p>\n

The judge struggled to accept Patel was remorseful given her \u201cbizarre\u201d comments to a pre-sentence report writer about why the offending happened.<\/p>\n

Patel said two men had entered her life and wanted a relationship but then manipulated her. They then spread \u201cvicious rumours in the community\u201d about her before reporting her to officials, including those at Inland Revenue, the Ministry of Social Development and MBIE.<\/p>\n

One of them, she claimed, was a senior immigration official. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re extraordinary explanations, and which, to be frank with you, are nonsense,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n

In her section 27 report, Patel also spoke of being blackmailed by two men in India and enduring a \u201cdifficult arranged marriage\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, she had a stable job for the past two and a half years as a mental health support worker and had letters of support from the Sikh community.<\/p>\n

\u2018You broke them\u2019<\/p>\n

The harm to the victims was clear in their statements, the judge said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll three of them trusted you … and you broke them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey got into significant financial difficulty … they have been emotionally affected, have felt isolated and stressed about the fact that you lied to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey felt exploited by you,\u201d Judge Clark said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou knew their immigration status. You knew what the law required you to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou exploited them.\u201d<\/p>\n

After taking a starting point of 33 months\u2019 jail, he applied various discounts before getting to 21 and a half months\u2019 jail.<\/p>\n

On the six charges of exploitation of unlawful or temporary employees, two of aiding and abetting, and one charge of provision of false or misleading information, he then converted that to 11 months\u2019 home detention and ordered the reparation to be paid.<\/p>\n

\u2018Holding offenders accountable\u2019<\/p>\n

Jason Perry, MBIE national manager immigration investigations, said the convictions send a clear message to those looking to take advantage of unlawful or temporary workers. <\/p>\n

\u201cMs Patel\u2019s sentencing is a result of a complex five-year Immigration New Zealand investigation \u2013 demonstrating our commitment to holding offenders accountable and protecting the rights of all workers in New Zealand, regardless of their immigration status.\u201d <\/p>\n

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over eight months in 2018, she hired the victims, who either had temporary work visas or no visa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45669,30687,9526,32758,6794,1863,93586,8473,12765,36894,37668,12513,23546,78,5836,1362,111,43,139,69,95022,2744,6180,2863,118091,1516,3258,61,11427,33281,6123,4478,25152],"class_list":["post-187988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-50k","tag-accept","tag-another","tag-anything","tag-baby","tag-back","tag-businesswoman","tag-done","tag-employer","tag-entitlements","tag-exploited","tag-failed","tag-forcing","tag-in","tag-lost","tag-made","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-patel","tag-pay","tag-shes","tag-sleep","tag-sneha","tag-staff","tag-struggles","tag-to","tag-van","tag-wages","tag-while","tag-workers","tag-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187988","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=187988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}