website renewal<\/a> fee. <\/p>\nFeeling under pressure, the victim transferred the money, again to Dow\u2019s account, but the next day she called the real Bronson, who advised it had not been him she had spoken with. <\/p>\n
\u201cJack\u201d and another scammer, who went by the name of \u201cAaron\u201d, called two other victims with similar scams and sent fake invoices for payment with Dow\u2019s bank account.<\/p>\n
![\"The]()
The woman was found guilty by a jury earlier in the year in the Kaikohe District Court. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
For each of the deposits, which totalled $5717, Dow transferred funds to the offshore account.<\/p>\n
Police were alerted to the scam and Dow told them during an interview she had reported the company to the Serious Fraud Office.<\/p>\n
Her case went to trial in the Kaikohe District Court earlier this year.<\/p>\n
She was found guilty of 10 charges related to money laundering and receiving property and acquitted on two.<\/p>\n
At sentencing, Judge Gene Tomlinson said, at first, Dow did not know the operation was a scam.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was played like the victims were but she was reckless thereafter because she had a much better opportunity to realise and take action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s bright, but you can be bright and naive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crown lawyer Danica Soich said Dow had a symbiotic relationship with the scammers and she had significant knowledge and training in cyber security.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne could not exist without the other,\u201d Soich said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s not a little old grandma down the street who\u2019s got an email. She\u2019s got special knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Sam McDonald said Dow\u2019s life had taken a turn after the Christchurch earthquakes when she had to relocate to Kait\u0101ia.<\/p>\n
She was fluent in Japanese and had planned to study in Japan, but after moving to Kait\u0101ia she struggled to find employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a big difference between dishonesty offending when you are poor and dishonesty offending when you are rich,\u201d McDonald said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about economic disadvantage, this is not about greed and this is not about sophisticated white-collar crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a sad set of circumstances for a young woman with potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Tomlinson said Dow was reckless because she ignored the red flags.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou desperately did not want this to be dodgy and you wanted it to be okay so you kind of ignored the signs.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when you want something, you blinker yourself off to things that should be giant red flags.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Tomlinson acknowledged Dow was an unwilling victim of the scammers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were persuasive people, but you were never going to get away with this, Ms Dow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dow was sentenced to six months\u2019 community detention, supervision and ordered to pay reparation to the victims.<\/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":"All of the accounts were opened in her name. In April 2023, four victims received phone calls from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13619,1651,2175,1644,2082,33184,187,78,1019,18839,33183,33186,101,300,111,43,139,69,13692,15483,29058,205,1461,5161,16708,199,33185,3114,102,1354,5816],"class_list":["post-35666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-convictions","tag-digital","tag-dow","tag-financial","tag-for","tag-hardship","tag-hosting","tag-in","tag-international","tag-kaitia","tag-kimberley","tag-laundering","tag-left","tag-money","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offer","tag-promising","tag-quickly","tag-role","tag-scam","tag-sentenced","tag-skills","tag-take","tag-unravelled","tag-website","tag-with","tag-woman","tag-womans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35666","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=35666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}