Forgery leads to conviction

 

Mangawhai woman Valerie Kerr (72) has pleaded guilty and been convicted on three charges of forgery and one charge of presenting a forged document.

The conviction at the North shore District Court on April 26 follows a three year investigation.

The accused’s husband had, at the time of the offending, been treasurer of incorporated society Anchorage Associations, and the accused, having access to paperwork pertaining to the management of the society, used private information for pecuniary purposes involving monetary gain.

A motion to investigate the Anchorage Association accounts was passed at their June 2013 AGM.

A suspect document was identified during the investigation and forwarded to police who confirmed the document was forged.

The forgery involved the manufacture of bank withdrawal forms and presentation of those forms to the BNZ in Wellsford, which then followed a trail leading to charges laid by the police to which Mrs Kerr pleaded guilty.

Several applications were made by the accused’s lawyers for a discharge without conviction, but Judge Hinton denied these saying “the offences are of a serious nature and you have accepted this. They involved a degree of planning and as you were not a member of the Anchorage committee and therefore had no authority to access their accounts your actions amounted to a breach of trust.”

Mrs Kerr was ordered by Judge Hinton to make monetary restitution and also serve 50 hours community service.