More details emerge of Northland fraudster Joanne Harrison's past

Former Northland woman Joanne Harrison is sentenced in the Manukau District Court in 2017 for defrauding the Ministry of Transport of more than $726,000. Photo / File

The lifting of a court suppression order has revealed yet more offending by a serial fraudster who worked for the Far North District Council and Corrections while she was living in Northland.

Joanne Harrison, of Waimate North in the Bay of Islands, was jailed in 2017 for three years and seven months after pleading guilty to defrauding the Ministry of Transport of more than $726,000.

She was deported to the UK in January and is prohibited from returning to New Zealand.

Last month, police seized her former home in Waimate North along with cash, jewellery and a car under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act. Harrison had transferred the house to her husband Patrick Sharp's name when the offending was discovered.

It has since emerged that Harrison was earlier convicted of fraud and forgery, but she was granted name suppression so the details could not be reported at the time.

That suppression order was revoked last month after a legal challenge by media.

In the earlier case, Harrison, then known as Joanne Sharp, was convicted and sentenced in July 2007 to 300 hours' community service for forgery, using a forged document, altering a document, using an altered document, and obtaining by deception. The charges arose from her employment at Tower Insurance.

She was granted suppression after convincing the judge the offending was a one-off committed by an unwell woman.

Around the same time, in June 2007, she was hired by the Far North District Council as a senior manager, departing just over a year later in October 2008.

The council maintains there was no indication of financial inconsistencies during her employment.

In 2017, she was also convicted of benefit fraud and two more months were added to her prison sentence.

That fraud was committed between December 2008 and April 2009 while Harrison was working for the Department of Corrections in Northland.

She admitted falsifying a wage slip to show she was earning $482 a week, allowing her to claim a domestic purposes benefit, when she was in fact earning $1842 a week.

When revoking the suppression order on the 2007 case, Judge Dale Clarkson told the Auckland District Court that Harrison's right to suppression for rehabilitative purposes was firmly outweighed by the principle of open justice and employers' right to know about her previous offending under both names.

Harrison's deportation notice alleged she had also fraudulently created material to obtain a New Zealand visa in 2006 in the skilled migrant category.