When she was arrested in July, Courtney spent almost a month in jail, which she said made her realise she wanted to \u201cmake a change\u201d to set a better example for her two children, now aged 2 and 3.<\/p>\n
Filling up trolleys and walking out<\/p>\n
Between 2020 and 2025, Courtney stole from 20 Auckland Woolworths supermarket locations, from Browns Bay to P\u014dkeno.<\/p>\n
Carmen was involved in some of those, racking up a total of 13 shoplifting charges, while Courtney had 18.<\/p>\n
The twins hit multiple supermarkets more than once, at times using a pram to conceal items ranging from baby formula to cosmetics to frozen meals.<\/p>\n
On August 3, 2023, Courtney and a friend entered Woolworths Meadowlands with two reusable bags in their trolley.<\/p>\n
Courtney placed a \u201clarge amount\u201d of beauty products into the bags and the pair sailed through the checkout making no attempt to pay for $6622.20 worth of items.<\/p>\n
On March 24, 2024, Courtney, her brother Brett Habib and another relative were in Woolworths Highland Park.<\/p>\n
They filled up several trolleys with items including makeup, baby formula, cans of corned beef and boxes of soft drink.<\/p>\n
The group made many trips in and out of the supermarket as they loaded up their car.<\/p>\n
They stole goods worth a total of $16,274.40 but the products were all recovered and returned to the store.<\/p>\n
Her brother has already been sentenced for his role in that incident.<\/p>\n
Woolworths was not the family\u2019s only target, however, and on November 12, 2023, Courtney arrived in the Westfield St Lukes carpark with four unknown others in two separate cars.<\/p>\n
The group of five each entered Kmart St Lukes separately, filling their trolleys with a total of $2500 worth of homewares and leaving without paying.<\/p>\n
These were some, but not all of the Habibs\u2019 most significant shoplifting expeditions.<\/p>\n
Judge Frances Eivers sentenced the Habib twins in Manukau District Court this week. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n
Taken out to steal from the age of 10<\/p>\n
Carmen\u2019s lawyer Kevin Lamb told the court about the twins\u2019 upbringing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to push the emotional too much, ma\u2019am, but this family was absolutely ravaged by alcohol and drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defendants did not have enough food growing up as their mother spent all her money on \u201csubstances\u201d.<\/p>\n
The twins were told to go out and steal if they wanted to eat, he said.<\/p>\n
Judge Frances Eivers also acknowledged how the twins\u2019 hardship fed into their offending as adults.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were essentially taken out to steal from shops from the age of 10,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Courtney\u2019s lawyer Elizabeth Gresson said shoplifting was a learned behaviour for the twins and it was their family\u2019s \u201cmodus operandi\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was encouraged throughout her childhood to enter into this form of activity,\u201d Gresson said. \u201cShe was influenced by older family members and that included, unfortunately, her mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
This \u201cform of dishonesty\u201d became normalised, which she said made her client less at fault for her crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe simply hasn\u2019t learned how to think in regard to that,\u201d the lawyer said. \u201cShe makes decisions that are impaired.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gresson highlighted there was no evidence Courtney was stealing to on-sell products as a form of income.<\/p>\n
A \u2018reluctant participant\u2019<\/p>\n
Lamb claimed Carmen was a \u201creluctant participant\u201d in the family\u2019s shoplifting expeditions.<\/p>\n
On supermarket CCTV footage of some of the thefts, he said Carmen could be seen standing to the side and looking after their children.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarmen was never happy doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the offending, Carmen had moved out of the family home with her own two children to \u201cseparate herself\u201d from her wh\u0101nau\u2019s shoplifting ways.<\/p>\n
Carmen was, however, no stranger to the courts and had 15 previous convictions, Judge Eivers said.<\/p>\n
Breaking the cycle<\/p>\n
The 26 days that Courtney was in jail after her arrest were a \u201cturning point\u201d for her, she told the court.<\/p>\n
In custody for the first time, she confronted what she had done and the consequences of being separated from her children.<\/p>\n
The judge addressed this turning point and commended Courtney for sticking to the conditions of 232 days of electronically monitored bail since being released.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Your children] were who you focused on and who you focused on when you were in custody,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The judge warned Courtney that if she did not change her ways her children would follow the same pattern of learned criminal behaviour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what your own children are going to do … because they don\u2019t know any different.\u201d<\/p>\n
An organised family operation<\/p>\n
Judge Eivers said the twins\u2019 crimes caused \u201csignificant loss\u201d to Woolworths and had a trickle-down effect impacting the wider community.<\/p>\n
The offending was premeditated and essentially the family was a group that targeted stores in \u201call areas\u201d of Auckland.<\/p>\n
The women may not have been the main organisers but they went along with what their family did, the judge said.<\/p>\n
She shortened the twins\u2019 sentences for their guilty pleas, youth, background and willingness to pay back what they owed.<\/p>\n
She also took into account the effect incarceration would have on their children.<\/p>\n
Courtney was sentenced to seven months\u2019 home detention and ordered to engage in Corrections\u2019 career and budgeting programmes.<\/p>\n
The nearly $24,000 owed to Woolworths would take \u201cyears and years\u201d to pay off, the judge said, so she reduced the amount to $10,000, which is to be repaid in weekly instalments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich is still a lot,\u201d Judge Eivers said.<\/p>\n
For two charges of driving while disqualified in March and May of last year, Courtney was convicted, discharged and disqualified for six months.<\/p>\n
Despite \u2018struggles\u2019 a close family<\/p>\n
Judge Eivers said Carmen had the \u201csame struggles\u201d growing up as her twin sister.<\/p>\n
She was sentenced to eight months\u2019 home detention and ordered to pay reparation of $5600 in weekly instalments.<\/p>\n
The judge thanked the twins\u2019 wh\u0101nau for filling the court\u2019s public gallery in support.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see … you are a close family despite what are difficult circumstances in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She\u2019s currently based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When she was arrested in July, Courtney spent almost a month in jail, which she said made her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20784,95,17517,37222,1061,80246,1757,15416,2109,564,186181,78,300,6178,111,43,139,69,29691,2081,5659,186182,4742,24809,12633,36096,97,165,8229,61,6859,1847,1850,3608],"class_list":["post-351320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-alcohol","tag-and","tag-because","tag-carmen","tag-children","tag-courtney","tag-drugs","tag-eat","tag-family","tag-food","tag-habib","tag-in","tag-money","tag-mother","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-order","tag-raised","tag-say","tag-shoplifters","tag-shoplifting","tag-sisters","tag-spent","tag-steal","tag-supermarket","tag-their","tag-they","tag-to","tag-told","tag-twin","tag-twins","tag-were"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351320","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=351320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}