{"id":281534,"date":"2026-02-13T03:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/281534\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T03:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:22:10","slug":"woman-jailed-after-dead-peoples-names-used-in-covid-subsidy-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/281534\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman jailed after dead people&#8217;s names used in Covid subsidy fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  [&amp;_p]:tit-sub-xl tit-sub-xl md:[&amp;_p]:d-tit-sub-xl md:d-tit-sub-xl mb-[1.3rem]\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">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. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">She was sentenced at Wellington District Court on February 5.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">All the applications were submitted between April and June 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">She used her own name and the names of 10 others in the applications.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">This included individuals unaware their identifies were being used, and in some cases, the names of dead people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">A reparation order was sought, but no repayments had been made to date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Wellington woman has been sentenced to 20 months in prison after she used her own name and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[40096,67,42,43,40,38,41,39,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-281534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-coronavirus-pandemic","9":"tag-crime-and-justice","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories","16":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281534","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=281534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}