{"id":81463,"date":"2025-10-16T04:55:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81463\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T04:55:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:55:09","slug":"mat-mowbray-wrongly-linked-to-wealthy-kiwi-family-members-child-abuse-material-case-family-says-rumours-false","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81463\/","title":{"rendered":"Mat Mowbray wrongly linked to wealthy Kiwi family member\u2019s child abuse material case, family says rumours false"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Herald can also confirm he is not the individual jailed over the offending. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe convicted person is a 46-year-old New Zealand resident and is in custody; Mr Mowbray is none of these, he lives in Hong Kong with his family, is not in custody and has no involvement with that case whatsoever,\u201d the family spokesperson said. <\/p>\n

The spokesperson said Mat firmly believed individuals convicted of sexual offences against children should never receive name suppression.<\/p>\n

The real defendant was sentenced last month by Auckland District Court Judge Maria Pecotic for knowingly possessing thousands of objectionable material files and knowingly importing the content.<\/p>\n

He was given a 3% sentence reduction for giving $50,400 to charities<\/a> days before he was due to be sentenced.<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s name, his family\u2019s name and their high-profile company were permanently suppressed. This decision has been appealed. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time a wealthy New Zealander has been falsely connected to this offending. <\/p>\n

In August, rich-lister Wayne Wright was also wrongly accused<\/a> by Twitter\u2019s Grok of being the defendant. <\/p>\n

The falsely accused businessman told the Herald at the time: \u201cThe public have a right to know people have done such things and these folks should not have permanent name suppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wright said the defendant should come clean with their identity, no matter the consequences.<\/p>\n

He urged the man to have his suppression lifted.<\/p>\n

Wright believed name suppression should not be available if someone was jailed, with an exception if any children involved could be impacted by publication.<\/p>\n

The Herald has also been made aware of another man who was allegedly falsely linked by AI to recently published sex crimes in New Zealand. <\/p>\n

University of Auckland senior law lecturer Dr Benjamin Liu said those who publish false claims like this can face criminal or civil action. <\/p>\n

If a New Zealander is wrongly accused of horrible offending like this on social media, he said New Zealand law applies. <\/p>\n

He said Kiwis would have the ability to sue companies whose AI software had wrongly accused them of crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is quite serious, to be honest. I know AI makes mistakes all the time, but multiple laws are being breached.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reputational damage and emotional damage can be huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until now, Liu said he had not heard of cases where AI models falsely accused New Zealanders of crimes.<\/p>\n

Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who covers issues such as sexual assault, workplace misconduct, media, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Herald can also confirm he is not the individual jailed over the offending. \u201cThe convicted person is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1903,1763,1121,2511,1968,16843,2109,42,194,7055,62547,6287,4754,26097,43,24602,312,1961,61,40,38,41,39,1455,2940,12475],"class_list":["post-81463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-abuse","tag-article","tag-case","tag-child","tag-discusses","tag-false","tag-family","tag-headlines","tag-kiwi","tag-linked","tag-mat","tag-material","tag-members","tag-mowbray","tag-news","tag-rumours","tag-says","tag-this","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-warning","tag-wealthy","tag-wrongly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81463","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=81463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}