A Tongan woman has been sentenced to community detention for stealing almost $61,164 from a Waitakere business to fund her planned lavish wedding.
Mele Hala’s impending marriage led her to commit the crime since 2022.
The court was told Hala had an engagement on New Year’s Day 2022 but her partner then lost his job, putting significant financial pressure on both, according to a report by the New Zealand Herald.
The judge, however, noted that Hala and her fiancé split in April 2023. The offending didn’t stop until she was caught in May 2023.
“The financial pressures on you for your wedding are really no different from others,” the judge said. “How you chose to deal with it is simply inappropriate.”
The court heard that Hala was employed at Briscoes Westgate in a role that involved handling purchase and refund transactions when she started exploiting the position for personal gain in August 2022, reported the Herald.
On 26 separate occasions between then and May the following year she created fraudulent refund transactions – making up names and emails of pretend refund customers then funnelling a total of $61,164 into her own bank account.
When averaged out, that equated to the pilfering of almost $7000 per month before she was caught, the judge noted.
Hala admitted the scheme to her employer and lost her job after the company completed an internal investigation, court documents state. But she declined to make a formal police statement.
She was charged a year later with obtaining by deception.
That charge, along with theft by a person in a special relationship, are among the most common charges for those accused of stealing from their employers. Both carry punishments of up to seven years’ imprisonment.
Defence lawyer Jenny Verry said her client had come to court with $2000 that she was able to use as a lump sum reparation payment before paying a further $100 per week.
“She has made every effort to get rid of every other debt so she can focus on this reparation,” the defence lawyer said, adding that her client had tried to get a loan to cover a larger reparation payment but was unable to obtain it due to the nature of the charges. “She committed to doing that [paying the money back].”
