{"id":401027,"date":"2026-04-28T05:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/401027\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T05:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:08:09","slug":"woman-fleeces-823k-from-waikato-charity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/401027\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman fleeces $823k from Waikato charity"},"content":{"rendered":"

She appeared in the Hamilton District Court<\/a> this morning, where, through her lawyer Mark Jepson, she pleaded guilty to theft by a person in a special relationship.<\/p>\n

The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.<\/p>\n

She was convicted by Judge Kim Saunders and remanded in custody for sentencing until June.<\/p>\n

\u2018Refund\u2019, \u2018koha\u2019, \u2018volunteers\u2019<\/p>\n

Given the woman\u2019s suppression, the exact details of her offending can\u2019t be printed.<\/p>\n

However, the summary of facts shows she was employed by the organisation for about four years as a senior administrator.<\/p>\n

She helped a senior staff member execute their everyday tasks.<\/p>\n

As the offender\u2019s role developed, she took on more responsibility around the bank accounts and finance and gained \u201coperating authorisation\u201d on a number of the organisation\u2019s accounts.<\/p>\n

Her thefts began in 2022, and, for one ASB account she jointly had with her husband, continued until September last year.<\/p>\n

She made deposits totalling $490,841.55 with deposit references including \u201cgrateful volunteers\u201d and \u201ckoha\u201d.<\/p>\n

She also put $10,530 into her Kiwibank account with references including \u201crefund\u201d and \u201cmaara kai\u201d.<\/p>\n

In her and her husband\u2019s Heartland Bank account, she deposited a further $100,274.60 with references including \u201cvolunteers\u201d.<\/p>\n

She deposited a total of $190,126.77 into their ANZ shared account.<\/p>\n

The woman also had the organisation\u2019s petty cash Eftpos card and made deposits worth $24,572.50 at ATM cash machines for her own purposes, and never provided any receipts.<\/p>\n

Throughout July and August last year, she used the Eftpos card \u201cin emergency situations\u201d to top up her personal Travelex card with $7482.30.<\/p>\n

The total amount stolen was $823,827.72.<\/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 appeared in the Hamilton District Court this morning, where, through her lawyer Mark Jepson, she pleaded guilty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[81990,206908,14882,64582,1977,9948,206907,71,38626,296,206909,130,111,43,139,69,4989,57301,9100,131,37399,85539,50961,1524,102,1354],"class_list":["post-401027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-81990","tag-823k","tag-accounts","tag-charitable","tag-charity","tag-employee","tag-fleeces","tag-from","tag-grateful","tag-into","tag-koha","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-organisation","tag-references","tag-such","tag-than","tag-transferred","tag-trusted","tag-volunteers","tag-waikato","tag-with","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401027","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=401027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}