A man netted tens of thousands of dollars through deceiving dozens of people on social media, and by selling cars that did not belong to him.
Hashim Mikdad Hashim’s offending began in June 2020, when he was still only 18 and impersonated a motor vehicle dealer to sell a car on Facebook.
When the buyer transferred $3000 into his bank account, Hashim immediately blocked him on social media.
The prospective buyer never got the car, or his money back.
Over the next three years, until June this year, Hashim scammed at least 30 people by pretending to trade in cars and iPhones.
When appearing to sell cars, he sometimes sought to gain credibility by telling prospective buyers he was a salesperson for various real vehicle dealerships.
His victims were over much of the country - in Auckland, Cambridge, Hastings, Wellington, Motueka, Balclutha and Invercargill.
The amounts he took from each ranged from a few hundred dollars for an iPhone, to $8000 for a car.
On Thursday, Hashim, now 22, appeared in the Napier District Court after pleading guilty to more than 30 charges of obtaining by deception, accessing a computer for dishonest purposes, and converting motor vehicles.
Judge Geoff Rea remanded him on bail to be sentenced in October.
The court has been told that Hashim was charged when his first tranche of offending was discovered, but then spent about a year evading police, during which time he carried on scamming people.
This came to light when Judge Rea took steps to ensure that $50,000 which had been placed into a lawyer’s trust account to repay Hashim’s victims would be paid to the court.
The judge said he had dealt with Hashim earlier in the court process, before he had committed some of his online offences.
“I got constant promises about money. Never saw a cent. Then he disappeared and reoffended,” Judge Rea said.
“I don’t trust him, and without the money, he is going to jail.”
The hearing was adjourned for two hours so that Hashim’s counsel, Matt Dixon, could arrange for the money to be transferred.
When the case resumed, Judge Rea said the money was now “in the safe hands of the Ministry of Justice”.
The judge said the payment would make a “significant difference” to the sentence that Hashim would receive.
Police summaries of facts show that, for the iPhone scams, Hashim advertised phones for sale on Facebook Marketplace.
After would-be buyers transferred money into a bank account, they found that conversations had been removed from the platform and the seller’s profile had been deleted.
In some cases, buyers were provided with courier tracking numbers that proved to be bogus.
One of the prospective iPhone buyers was sceptical about the trade, and was provided with a phone number.
He called it and spoke to Hashim before making an online banking transfer of $662.
He was given a New Zealand Post tracking number which proved to be invalid and found the next day that Hashim’s Facebook account and the messages from him had disappeared.
For the vehicle scams, the Napier man and former Taradale High School student rented cars and then sold them to other people online.
In one case he drove with his victim in a Toyota Prius to an ASB bank in Manukau to withdraw $4300 in cash to complete the sale.
The buyer then dropped Hashim at a bus stop.
A week later, the man was driving the car when he was spoken to by police, who told him it had been stolen.
In another incident, a buyer contacted Speedy Rentals in Henderson, Auckland, to ask if any finance company money was owing on one of their vehicles, which he had just bought for $5000.
Speedy Rentals told the buyer that their vehicle, which had been rented by Hashim, was not for sale, and that they had been the victims of a crime.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
The victim, 37-year-old Teri Rhind, suffered critical injuries after being hit.