She spent the money gambling, and during the offending period attended a Taylor Swift concert in Sydney, a Yankees game and Justin Timberlake concert in New York.<\/p>\n
However, at her sentencing this week, Judge Denise Clark accepted an affidavit from Reyes in which she stated her partner at the time paid for her New York trip, and she wasn\u2019t gambling when she went to the Taylor Swift concert.<\/p>\n
Defence counsel Raewyn Sporle said Reyes had insight into her offending, had self-referred to the Problem Gambling Foundation, and was now at a \u201cno to low\u201d chance of experiencing gambling harm \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t enough to convince the judge she should escape a conviction.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have looked at this really, really carefully … but I can\u2019t say that a conviction would be out of all proportion to the gravity of your offending,\u201d Judge Clark told Reyes in the Hamilton District Court as she entered convictions to three charges of obtaining by deception, one of which was representative, after taking $112,000 from her colleagues.<\/p>\n
\u2018I can\u2019t afford a burial plot\u2019<\/p>\n
Court documents show the first victim was made aware by her manager in early December 2023 that Reyes\u2019 mother in the Philippines was sick and in hospital.<\/p>\n
In March 2024, she was told Reyes\u2019 mother had died. When she later saw Reyes and noticed she was crying, they spoke.<\/p>\n
Later that morning, the victim got a message from Reyes saying her mother had died, she had no money, and couldn\u2019t afford a burial plot in the Philippines for her.<\/p>\n
After speaking to her husband, the victim agreed to transfer $2000 to Reyes.<\/p>\n
\u2018My father has a brain problem\u2019<\/p>\n
Around the end of the month, the second victim saw Reyes and noticed she seemed distracted, and asked if she was all right.<\/p>\n
Reyes said her mother in the Philippines was sick.<\/p>\n
Over the next couple of weeks, Reyes said her mother had a heart attack, was hospitalised, then discharged, then later readmitted, and then died.<\/p>\n
Another time, she said her father had been hospitalised with a \u201cbrain problem\u201d and that it was \u201cvery serious\u201d.<\/p>\n
On April 11, the victim got a Facebook message from Reyes saying she was back home, her father was in hospital, and asked if she could borrow some money but would pay her back on payday.<\/p>\n
When asked how much she needed, Reyes said $3000.<\/p>\n
\u2018The $90,000 heart surgery\u2019<\/p>\n
In January 2024, Reyes told the third victim her mother was in hospital and needed $10,000 for heart surgery.<\/p>\n
She contacted him a week later saying her mother had a heart attack and the cost of the surgery and hospital expenses was now $90,000.<\/p>\n
She asked for $35,000.<\/p>\n
The victim cashed in some investments and withdrew some savings totalling $36,000.<\/p>\n
Reyes promised to pay him back by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
On February 11, she advised her boss that her mother had died during surgery and told several other colleagues over the following days.<\/p>\n
Immigration records revealed Reyes flew to Sydney overnight on February 23 to attend a Taylor Swift concert. During this time, she\u2019d also falsely claimed two weeks of bereavement leave.<\/p>\n
On March 9, Reyes contacted the victim again, saying she needed $1000 that day to pay the funeral director to have her mother\u2019s body released, but said she needed it in e-vouchers, due to sending it to the Philippines.<\/p>\n
Angelina Reyes defrauded her Waikato DHB colleagues of $112,000 … and on one occasion she flew to Australia to see Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n
She was back in touch again on May 6, saying her father now needed surgery and required $6000. The victim was only able to transfer $1000.<\/p>\n
The victim inherited more than $60,000 from a deceased grandparent.<\/p>\n
Reyes asked for $40,000, which they agreed to transfer.<\/p>\n
Three days later, Reyes asked for another $10,000 to travel home to see her sick father.<\/p>\n
In July, she contacted the victim again, saying she was in the Philippines and had been hospitalised after trying to commit suicide and had incurred a debt of $30,000.<\/p>\n
The victim didn\u2019t have that much and instead transferred her $600 and gave her a $400 pay safe card.<\/p>\n
He then cashed up more investments as he wanted to help her and put $18,000 in her account.<\/p>\n
However, immigration records showed she was in New York during that time.<\/p>\n
On July 23, she called the victim and told him she owed lawyers $100,000, and if she didn\u2019t pay it, her father would go to jail, and she claimed to be suicidal again.<\/p>\n
The victim said he didn\u2019t have any money, but Reyes told him to tell his parents he had been scammed out of the money.<\/p>\n
However, he declined to do that.<\/p>\n
The next day, she video-called the victim and said she had flights booked back to New Zealand but couldn\u2019t leave the country until she paid the $100,000.<\/p>\n
She later admitted lying about owing $100,000, and had lost $18,000 gambling.<\/p>\n
In total, Reyes siphoned $107,200 from that victim due to the stories she had told him.<\/p>\n
When questioned by police, Reyes said she had a \u201cbig gambling problem\u201d.<\/p>\n
She also admitted lying about her mother\u2019s death, that her father was sick, and that she had attempted suicide so the victim would give her money.<\/p>\n
Reyes also confirmed that her mother and father were \u201calive and well\u201d in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
\u2018She is a promising nurse\u2019<\/p>\n
Sporle said her client had fully repaid all her victims.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d also referred herself to the Problem Gambling Foundation in November 2024.<\/p>\n
In fighting for her client\u2019s Section 106 discharge without conviction, Sporle said there was not a lot more that she could have done.<\/p>\n
Reyes had also been in constant contact with the Nursing Council, who stated Reyes might lose her \u201cability to work, her career, her livelihood, and not be able to work in a field that she has trained for\u201d.<\/p>\n
That would impact her ability to pay back her family, who had helped pay back her victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has taken steps so that nothing like this will happen again, and she is a promising nurse.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s still young, at 34.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018You became a liar and manipulator\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Clark was sympathetic to Reyes\u2019 plight and the good work she\u2019d done in turning her life around.<\/p>\n
However, she reminded her that she still had a long journey ahead, as gambling wasn\u2019t an addiction that could be fixed overnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear that addiction is powerful.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt leads people into places where they will do things that they would otherwise not do.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith you, you became a liar and a manipulator.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got yourself in such a state that you didn\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said it seemed as though the victims felt a sense of shame, \u201cbut they shouldn\u2019t need to\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Clark found that just a conviction on Reyes\u2019 record would be a satisfactory punishment.<\/p>\n
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She spent the money gambling, and during the offending period attended a Taylor Swift concert in Sydney, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23562,167980,74,11771,17094,1863,1040,56154,15970,71,578,11517,300,130,111,43,139,11515,69,6662,10142,167979,15452,20863,131,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-307367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-23562","9":"tag-112k","10":"tag-after","11":"tag-angelina","12":"tag-avoid","13":"tag-back","14":"tag-bid","15":"tag-colleagues","16":"tag-conviction","17":"tag-from","18":"tag-gambling","19":"tag-loses","20":"tag-money","21":"tag-more","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-newzealand","25":"tag-nurse","26":"tag-nz","27":"tag-off","28":"tag-paid","29":"tag-reyes","30":"tag-scammed","31":"tag-she","32":"tag-than","33":"tag-to"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307367","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=307367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}