{"id":336971,"date":"2026-03-19T06:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T06:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/336971\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T06:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T06:24:08","slug":"hamilton-man-justin-ponga-worked-with-friend-from-church-to-launder-money-for-bank-scammers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/336971\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton man Justin Ponga worked with \u2018friend from church\u2019 to launder money for bank scammers"},"content":{"rendered":"

While he avoided jail time, Judge Nevin Dawson warned him that, if he returned to court with further dishonesty<\/a> offences, he might spend time in prison.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ll protect you from scammers\u2019<\/p>\n

On July 8, 2021, the Dunedin victims received a phone call from Ponga\u2019s co-offender, who posed as a BNZ employee.<\/p>\n

He convinced the victims to allow him to access their computers and internet banking to protect them from scammers. <\/p>\n

Instead, he stole their money, taking $7200.24 the first time, before taking a further $5010.12.<\/p>\n

On the same day, the Auckland victim received a call from a man posing as a Westpac employee who claimed her bank account had been fraudulently accessed.<\/p>\n

He persuaded her to give him access to her accounts, first stealing $3190 and then $10,000 in two separate transactions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ponga had opened an ANZ account on June 28.<\/p>\n

On the day his co-offender stole the victims\u2019 money, it was all put into Ponga\u2019s account.<\/p>\n

Ponga then sent the money offshore, in three transactions totalling $13,405.97, using WorldRemit NZ Ltd.<\/p>\n

Another $11,931.09 was withdrawn from his account using various cash machines, supermarkets and service stations.<\/p>\n

On July 26, Ponga tried to send a further $8603.98, but was intercepted by an ANZ employee.<\/p>\n

He has not used that account since.<\/p>\n

Church member\u2019s \u2018business plan\u2019<\/p>\n

In court, Ponga\u2019s lawyer, Abby Brownlie, said her client got involved in the offending after being approached by a \u201ctrusted\u201d member at his local church.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe asked him [Ponga] to engage in essentially what was proposed as a business plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven Mr Ponga trusted the individual, he had known him for quite some time, he agreed to engage in this business plan, and he\u2019s well aware that he was reckless in this money laundering scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said Ponga didn\u2019t accept withdrawing any money from an ATM, but when pressed by the judge, accepted that he\u2019d handed his card to his \u201cfriend from church\u201d to take the money out.<\/p>\n

Ponga had a limited criminal history, but he had served a community detention sentence in April last year for four dishonesty offences.<\/p>\n

Brownlie urged the judge to hand down another community detention sentence so that Ponga could continue to work in a shop in Hamilton, and thereby pay reparation to the victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe takes full responsibility for the situation he became involved in, albeit he was wilfully blind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018People need to be protected from scammers\u2019<\/p>\n

Judge Dawson said Ponga\u2019s latest victims had suffered \u201csubstantial losses\u201d, while the community had also suffered.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are afraid of being scammed and losing their savings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI denounce your conduct. It is unacceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou claim not to know that people were being scammed … but this was totally wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople need to be protected from scammers and the assistance that enables these offences to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pre-sentence report identified that Ponga\u2019s attitude and his sense of entitlement contributed to his offending.<\/p>\n

After taking an overall starting point of 15 months\u2019 imprisonment, the judge allowed discounts before landing on 12 months.<\/p>\n

He then converted that sentence to six months\u2019 community detention so Ponga could repay his victims. <\/p>\n

Ponga was also sentenced to 150 hours of community work and ordered to pay reparation of $10,546.37.<\/p>\n

Judge Dawson told Ponga that he was \u201cat extreme risk\u201d of going to prison if he was brought back to court again on similar charges.<\/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":"While he avoided jail time, Judge Nevin Dawson warned him that, if he returned to court with further…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8990,1443,1643,138,12897,2082,18441,12632,71,6288,296,17468,45076,177903,440,5158,1329,300,111,139,69,84020,180506,312,1461,92569,3170,61,102,87539],"class_list":["post-336971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-8990","tag-about","tag-bank","tag-business","tag-church","tag-for","tag-fraudsters","tag-friend","tag-from","tag-hamilton","tag-into","tag-justin","tag-launder","tag-laundered","tag-local","tag-man","tag-member","tag-money","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ponga","tag-roped","tag-says","tag-scam","tag-scammers","tag-scheme","tag-to","tag-with","tag-worked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336971","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=336971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}