the judge<\/a> counted 59, the police 58, and her lawyer, 57.<\/p>\nThe court heard Salari was persistent. Her modus operandi was relatively simple but audacious; she\u2019d simply charge items back to organisations like the Hamilton City Council, or walk into a store, grab an item, then show a used receipt and ask for a refund.<\/p>\n
On some occasions, she\u2019d write a note as a staff member had their back turned, to help confirm the legitimacy of her fraud.<\/p>\n
This month she appeared for sentencing in the Hamilton District Court, where her lawyer, Stephanie Penn, faced the task of trying to keep her out of prison.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m a cancer patient\u2019<\/p>\n
Salari admitted 59 charges: 15 charges of obtaining by deception, four of attempting to obtain by deception, six of theft over $1000, and the remainder involving thefts and attempted thefts under $1000.<\/p>\n
The timeframe was over 10 months between December 2023 and October 2024, while 10 offences happened while she was subject to post-home detention conditions.<\/p>\n
She most commonly targeted retail outlets, usually The Warehouse, Bunnings, Woolworths, Briscoes, Mitre 10, Harvey Norman, and Farmers.<\/p>\n
However, other small businesses and franchises were also hit; Backdoor, Pet Doctors, NZ Safety Blackwoods, Hunting and Fishing, Top Town Wheels and Tyres, Foot Forward shoes, Tony\u2019s Tyres, Oxfords Clothing, Comins Pharmacy Cambridge, Health 2000, Whole Heart foods Hamilton, Country Providore, Bed Bath and Table, Farmlands, Rogerson Stables, and Resene in Hamilton.<\/p>\n
While Salari was mostly successful, she faced charges of attempting to obtain by deception or theft after staff or security picked up on her antics and either denied her a refund or recognised her and asked her to leave.<\/p>\n
That happened at Bunnings, Hamilton South, on December 11, 2023, where she asked for a paint to be made up and then asked for a refund of $55. The staff refused because the details didn\u2019t match and she became angry, saying her husband had earlier bought the goods.<\/p>\n
Security in The Warehouse also busted her after watching her put $59 worth of items in a trolley, then, using a receipt, ask for a refund.<\/p>\n
Another time she grabbed an $800 Dyson vacuum cleaner and simply walked out without paying.<\/p>\n
It was July 6 when she walked around the Mitre 10 Te Rapa car park picking up receipts off the ground and the rubbish bin before walking inside with an empty trolley, looking for the items.<\/p>\n
She asked a staff member for help to get spray paint and a floor rug before going to the customer desk to return them both.<\/p>\n
The rug happened to have been bought by a staff member, and she claimed to be their mother, but told them she\u2019d leave that and just get the refund for the spray paint, for which she was duly paid $76.32.<\/p>\n
On August 9, she rang Harvey Norman Te Rapa for an update on the arrival of a bunk bed and asked for a refund. In store, she presented a bank statement as proof of identity, but couldn\u2019t present the same Eftpos card that was used to buy the $600 bed.<\/p>\n
She became \u201cagitated and caused a scene\u201d when staff denied her a refund before claiming she was a cancer patient. Staff eventually succumbed and refunded her $600.<\/p>\n
On two occasions, she booked up items on HCC\u2019s account at NZ Safety Blackwoods, totalling nearly $1500.<\/p>\n
All up, her thefts totalled $24,138.98.<\/p>\n
\u2018She\u2019s rehabilitating herself\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Clark asked Penn why she was seeking up to 80% in discounts for her client.<\/p>\n
Penn replied that she\u2019d put \u201cup to\u201d 80%, to allow for her guilty pleas, tough upbringing, rehabilitation, remorse, and her alcohol and drug report.<\/p>\n
Salari had spent most of her time since her arrest at the Grace Foundation and had done so well that they\u2019d offered her a job, so she\u2019d enrolled in a course at the Open Polytechnic.<\/p>\n
![\"Serial]()
Serial shoplifter Anna Salari. Photo \/ NZ Police<\/p>\n
Judge Clark was quick to note Salari had gone through the \u201cone of the most rigorous treatments\u201d, the year-long Alcohol and Drug Treatment Court at Wait\u0101kere District Court.<\/p>\n
Salari did, \u201con paper at least\u201d, appear a reformed character.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little early to say that she is an example for others to follow when she is sitting in the dock,\u201d the judge said, drily.<\/p>\n
Penn urged the judge, if she got down to a sentence of 24 months jail or less, to convert it to home detention.<\/p>\n
But Judge Clark was unimpressed that Salari continued offending while on post-detention conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has just carried on, without even blinking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Penn said Hamilton was \u201cnot the best place\u201d for her client, but said if she got home detention, the Grace Foundation would give her a bed to serve her sentence.<\/p>\n
She also had a friend who had a property in Whitianga and offered reparation at $30 a week.<\/p>\n
\u2018This was not drug-addled offending\u2019<\/p>\n
In her pre-sentence report, Salari claimed to have been using meth when offending, but Judge Clark wasn\u2019t having it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say that I find that hard to believe, and that is on the basis of the sophistication of this offending.\u201d<\/p>\n
While on the one hand it wasn\u2019t hard to do what Salari did; you go into a shop and pretend to have bought something and ask for a refund.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you are successful and sometimes you are not.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there were a number of times … where I considered that Ms Salari\u2019s determination to succeed in her fraudulent and dishonest behaviour was actually quite significant … she was fully cognisant of what she was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Anna]()
Anna Salari, also known as Tracey Salari, was jailed for 17 months when she was sentenced in the Hamilton District Court last week on 59 fraud and theft-related charges. Photo \/ Belinda Feek <\/p>\n
\u201cTime and time again, Ms Salari, by her behaviour, demonstrated, in my view, a level of planning, premeditation, some form of deliberation in terms of the way that she undertook her offending.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not drug-addled offending.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was repeated offending over a sustained period of time, clearly for her own financial benefit.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was extremely aware of what she was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Today is the day, Ms Salari\u2019<\/p>\n
After completing her home detention sentence, but then on release conditions, \u201cshe just carried on\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor months, and months, making victims of a large number of people, obtaining a benefit to the extent of about $24,000, and really the only reason she stopped was because she was remanded in custody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salari\u2019s criminal history dated back to 1987, and she\u2019d been jailed seven times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a concerted effort by Ms Salari with a number of characteristics of the offending which tells me she was utterly determined to get her money.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was persistent in her efforts and on some occasions went away and came back on the same day to revictimise the same business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Clark took an overall starting point of four years and eight months before applying discounts for the defendant\u2019s guilty pleas, background, rehabilitation efforts and remorse, totalling 60%.<\/p>\n
She got down to 17 months\u2019 jail but refused to convert that into home detention, and also refused to grant Salari leave to apply for home detention at a later date.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday is the day, Ms Salari, that you are held accountable for all of the harm that you have done to others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Clark declined to order reparation because she didn\u2019t believe Salari would pay it.<\/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 targeted those stores nearly 60 times, stealing items worth a total of just under $25,000. The breadth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5845,806,2082,14641,700,10005,2190,111,43,139,69,1118,200381,21413,6180,4733,4743,8844],"class_list":{"0":"post-386624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-anna","9":"tag-as","10":"tag-for","11":"tag-jailed","12":"tag-latest","13":"tag-list","14":"tag-long","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-of","20":"tag-salaris","21":"tag-serial","22":"tag-shes","23":"tag-shoplifter","24":"tag-spree","25":"tag-victims"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386624","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=386624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}