{"id":262038,"date":"2026-02-01T05:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/262038\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T05:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:20:07","slug":"judge-slams-whangarei-mobil-station-over-mind-blowing-pos-failures-in-employee-theft-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/262038\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge slams Whang\u0101rei Mobil station over \u2018mind-blowing\u2019 POS failures in employee theft case"},"content":{"rendered":"

The court heard that between 2018 and 2020, Kumar was employed at the Walton St service station in Whang\u0101rei.<\/a><\/p>\n

More than $100,000 of the business\u2019 money was alleged to have been stolen by Kumar during that time.<\/p>\n

Representative charges for 2018, 2019 and 2020 were laid, rather than individual charges for each transaction, which would have amounted to more than 700 charges.<\/p>\n

At the trial, CCTV evidence showed Kumar at the point-of-sale (POS) system for 21 transactions, which related to the thefts in 2020.<\/p>\n

To carry out the acts, Kumar entered either a fake or a legitimate sale, which he then refunded and pocketed the cash. <\/p>\n

Judge Tomlinson<\/a> said the system was hopeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first heard the evidence, I thought I was mishearing,\u201d Judge Tomlinson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in the 80s and 90s, cash systems were better than what I heard about in this case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unaccounted shrinkage or excess stock that should appear sold wasn\u2019t. The cash missing was unnoticed; all of that should have been perfectly obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge said it was inexcusable for an organisation closely managing liquid petroleum to have systems that did not show stock missing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt truly beggars belief. The point-of-sale software failures are, quite frankly, mind-blowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

No CCTV footage was produced at trial for any of the other sales the Crown alleged were fraudulent, and Judge Tomlinson criticised the investigation for failing to collect crucial evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were gaps. The Crown should have asked questions like, \u2018Can we prove it on a particular day absent of the CCTV? Who was working on a particular day? Are there occasions his log-in was used when he wasn\u2019t there at all? Is the defendant\u2019s log-in used significantly more than others?\u2019,\u201d the judge said in his decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese questions do not appear to be asked and certainly weren\u2019t answered, and they should have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge said rosters and payroll evidence were not provided, and there were up to 10 log-ins being used on the POS.<\/p>\n

\u201cLog-in equals operator was plainly incorrect from the evidence I saw. Everything fails from this point.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas he actually working that day? Probably, but can\u2019t be sure. Maybe, but can\u2019t be sure. Was this a genuine refund? Who knows?<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Probably\u2019 is not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Tomlinson said the case lacked information and was supported by suspicions. <\/p>\n

Although he was sure it was Kumar in the CCTV footage stealing on 21 occasions, relating to charge three, the judge could not find him guilty on the remaining two charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhilst suspicion is to a high level, I cannot be sure. On charges one and two, Mr Kumar is acquitted.\u201c<\/p>\n

Kumar was convicted on the one charge and sentenced to 100 hours of community work and ordered to pay a reparation of $1800.<\/p>\n

Shannon Pitman is a Whang\u0101rei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ng\u0101puhi\/ Ng\u0101ti P\u016bkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The court heard that between 2018 and 2020, Kumar was employed at the Walton St service station in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23562,1117,74,138,1121,9948,43945,71,78,3958,44188,112417,130,111,43,139,69,1523,22126,150131,150130,41401,19993,13655,12418,4744,6211,131,14168,1869],"class_list":["post-262038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-23562","tag-accused","tag-after","tag-business","tag-case","tag-employee","tag-failures","tag-from","tag-in","tag-judge","tag-mindblowing","tag-mobil","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-petrol","tag-pointofsale","tag-pos","tag-slammed","tag-slams","tag-station","tag-stations","tag-stealing","tag-system","tag-than","tag-theft","tag-whangrei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262038","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=262038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}