No detective work required
Dogged legwork by a crack team of detectives was not needed to solve The Case of the Bare-Faced Fraudster.
It was more a case of sending a police car around with an officer to knock on the door of Karinya Kristian Isherwood’s Islington home.
Isherwood, also known as Harris, had apparently not grasped the concept of fraud, nor crime in general really.
Especially not the part about making some effort to get away with it.
The 53-year-old mum pleaded guilty in the Christchurch District Court to a charge of causing loss by deception. The one charge covered a whole list of fraudulent transactions.
Defence counsel Paul Johnson explained to Judge Gary MacAskill that Isherwood was a mother caring for two adult children, one a student and the other intellectually disabled.
He said she had been desperate after her benefit had been suspended.
She had been given some credit card details by an associate and had used them for a series of purchases.
Those details had been obtained by someone who phoned the woman victim on September 21 and claimed to be a credit controller for a phone company. The victim provided her full credit card details to make what she thought was a payment for an outstanding final invoice.
Instead, the details were given to Isherwood, who used them 15 times with eight merchants on September 26 and 27 to make purchases totalling $4099.
She bought goods including shoes, and had them delivered by courier to her own home address.
She used the details to pay for Sky at her home and to buy tickets online.
She also used them to pay for the registration fees on her car.
For the police, these fraudulent transactions contained a name and address.
Case solved.
Judge MacAskill noted that police had been able to cancel some of the transactions and return some of the goods, but he ordered Isherwood to pay $2552 outstanding reparations.
He imposed 200 hours of community work.
Isherwood is back on a benefit and has been ordered to pay the reparations at $25 a week.
Category: Focus
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