{"id":600837,"date":"2026-09-15T06:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T06:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/600837\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T06:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T06:40:11","slug":"auckland-man-martin-kells-given-community-detention-for-70000-covid-19-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/600837\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland man Martin Kells given community detention for $70,000 Covid-19 fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">Eligibility included a minimum 30% decline in actual or predicted revenue between January and June 2020. The business also had to exist before April 1, 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">The money Kells received was paid into his personal account or an account he controlled, and it was spent on groceries, school fees, credit card payments, alcohol or transferred to his ex-wife.<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">Kells made no voluntary repayments, but his brother repaid one loan of $11,800.<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">His application for a discharge without conviction was declined. <\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">Kells was also ordered to pay the remaining core debt of $59,000 by September 18. <\/p>\n<p>Stay ahead with the latest market moves, corporate updates, and economic insights by subscribing to our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\">Business newsletter<\/a> \u2013 your essential weekly round-up of all the business news you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eligibility included a minimum 30% decline in actual or predicted revenue between January and June 2020. The business&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24685,51,1558,1259,81317,20556,142014,2082,3561,19724,296066,5158,5133,130,111,43,139,69,1653,19764,5161,131,18324],"class_list":["post-600837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-24685","tag-auckland","tag-been","tag-community","tag-covid19","tag-detention","tag-entitled","tag-for","tag-fraud","tag-given","tag-kells","tag-man","tag-martin","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-payments","tag-received","tag-sentenced","tag-than","tag-wasnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600837","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=600837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}