Former Financial Markets Authority analyst Benjamin Anthony Kiro was sentenced to prison in 2016 for "long and gratuitous" fraud that included falsifying his CV to get that job and ripping off investors.
Prolific fraudster Benjamin Anthony Kiro, also known as Anthony Waitiri Bill Kiro, pleaded guilty to new fraud charges.
Kiro again coerced a Tinder date to give him money for a fake cryptocurrency investment.
He served a lengthy prison sentence last time. This time he sought home detention.
A former rugby league professional turned prolific swindler who was jailed in 2016 for what prosecutors deemed “long and gratuitous” fraud and cheating Tinder dates out of tens of thousands of dollars via fake investment opportunities has been back at it again.
Benjamin Anthony Kiro, also known as Anthony Waitiri Bill Kiro, returned to Auckland District Court last week after pleading guilty to a new set offending.
The 44-year-old again targeted a Tinder date, coercing her to give him $7000 for what he said was a cryptocurrency investment but instead frittered the money away on gambling. He also attempted to con a Northland car rental manager into paying him $13,000 after stealing a vehicle – claiming a gang member called Ruckus would “come after” him if he didn’t pay – and smuggled himself outside of Auckland in the back of a van in 2021 to escape the city’s strict Covid-19 lockdown.
During the latest sentencing hearing, Kiro wore a singlet covered by a high-vis construction vest as he sat in the dock. He claimed he wanted to stay out of jail so he could continue to pay restitution to his many victims.
“He is not sitting on his hands, sir,” defence lawyer Luka Grbavac told Judge Peter Winter, noting his client had already voluntarily paid back $5000 of the $7000 he owed his latest Tinder victim despite no court order being in place. “He’s been paying what he owes and he intends to continue that.”
Judge Winter agreed, noting Kiro was also starting to make progress – albeit slow progress – paying back his victims from nearly a decade earlier. At his 2016 sentencing, Kiro had been ordered to pay $75,000 reparations to his victims, with the expectation he tackle the expense after serving his four-and-a-half-year prison term.
He still owes $72,000.
‘Cynical and calculated’
Judge Brooke Gibson took a dim view of the swindler during his previous sentencing, ordering him to serve at least half of the prison sentence before he could begin to apply for parole.
“The community is entitled to a rest from people like you from time to time,” the judge said.
Kiro had pleaded guilty to 22 charges. including 10 counts of theft by a person in a special relationship and multiple counts involving forged documents, that took place between August 2014 and November 2015.
Prolific conman Benjamin Anthony Kiro stands in a dock at Auckland District Court in April 2016 as he is sentenced to four and a half years' imprisonment. He returned to the court recently after offending again. Photo / Nick Reed
The offending started the same year Kiro moved back to New Zealand from Australia, where he had lived since 2003. It would later be revealed that authorities in New South Wales had also laid 19 fraud-related charges against him alleging he stole $66,000, but it was too late, he had already left.
“You did have a difficult upbringing but that is no different from many people in the community,” Judge Gibson said at the time. “Your sporting skill gave you some advantages as you were able to secure some type of scholarship to attend a rugby league development squad in Australia and then you were able to move into the corporate sector in Australia and in New Zealand where some of your offending took place.”
Court documents state Kiro made false academic records from Australian universities to get a job with the Financial Markets Authority, where he worked for about three months.
He defrauded a number of his victims by presenting them with fake investment opportunities in initial public offerings.
“Mr Kiro represented that he was involved in an investment project managed by a well-known and respected investment firm in New Zealand, and he provided documentation to support his claim,” a High Court judge would later note in a decision rejecting his sentence appeal. “Mr Kiro offered a return of $29,800 for each $10,000 invested.
“The returns never eventuated. When pressed, Mr Kiro told the investors that there had been a hold-up and that the funds were being held in Hong Kong due to money laundering issues.”
He then failed to show up for meetings with victims.
“Later financial analysis of Mr Kiro’s bank accounts showed that no investments were ever made, and that Mr Kiro used the funds received by him for his personal use,” the High Court judgment noted.
On other occasions, Kiro persuaded people he met through Tinder to invest with him promising big returns. But again, the money was never invested.
Prosecutors say prolific conman Benjamin Anthony Kiro began offending again soon after his previous prison sentence ended.
In total, he defrauded his New Zealand-based victims of $249,765, of which he repaid $62,000 prior to his sentencing. Although he still owed nearly $182,000, Judge Gibson determined there was no realistic way he could repay it all so instead settled on the $75,000 reparation figure.
High Court Justice Edwin Wylie, who reviewed the district court decision, agreed it was stern but fair.
“Mr Kiro’s offending was cynical and calculated,” he said. “It involved a large number of vulnerable victims. The nature of the offending, and the effect it had on the victims, required denunciation.”
During the 2016 sentencing, defence lawyer Asishna Prasad said her client’s drugs and alcohol addictions had “escalated out of control”, prompting the offending. But her client was remorseful and had learned a “massive lesson”, she said.
His latest set of offending started within three months of his last sentence ending, Crown prosecutor Pearl Philpott pointed out last week.
His first post-release crime occurred in January 2021, when Kiro returned to his old hunting ground – Tinder – and told a victim that he worked full-time making cryptocurrency investments. He suggested during their first meeting that he help her make extra money through an investment.
“The following day the defendant messaged the victim saying he had invested $5000 on her behalf,” the summary of facts for the case states. “The victim had not agreed for the defendant to make any investments on her behalf but felt obliged to pay the defendant back.”
She was told she would receive a $38,711 return on her investment within a month. The following week, Kiro went to her home and took her to a website where he conned her into thinking she had already made more than $56,000. He then convinced her to hand over another $2000.
He would later tell police he used the money for gambling.
As a result, he was charged with two counts of theft by a person in a special relationship, which carries a maximum possible punishment of seven years’ imprisonment.
His next offence came in August that year when he snuck past an Auckland checkpoint during the Covid-19 Delta lockdown and was later found by police in Whanganui.
“Police located the defendant hiding under a duvet pretending to be his partner’s 18-year-old daughter,” court documents state.
The lockdown violation was punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment.
He then picked up a common assault charge in May 2022 after grabbing a woman’s hair and slamming her head into the steering wheel as she gave him a ride to his mother’s house. In February 2023, he was caught driving a Mercedes-Benz vehicle in Auckland that had been stolen from a residential garage in Whangārei.
In July last year, he picked up his final charge – obtaining by deception – after using a fake credit card number for a three-day rental vehicle hire in Kerikeri.
He did not return messages asking him to return the vehicle, and after the three-day rental period expired the owner used a GPS tracker to obtain it.
“Mr Kiro began to send messages to [the victim] and claimed that a package was hidden inside the vehicle which belonged to another associate,” court documents state. “Mr Kiro claimed the package was worth $130,000 and that the owner of the package would ‘come after’ [the victim] to recover it.”
Kiro claimed he could protect the victim from the third party if he paid $13,000, described as a “10% deposit”.
Benjamin Anthony Kiro was given a prison sentence in 2016. He now has a new list of victims. Photo / Nick Reed
The victim said he could have access to the vehicle again and retrieve whatever he needed, but Kiro persisted with the threats, describing his associate as a “henchman” and a “1 per center” with a “rigid black and white mentality” who was ready to get the compensation “any which way how”. Fearful, the victim returned the car to Kiro.
Still not satisfied with having scammed free use of a car, Kiro continued his campaign for “compensation”.
“They will come for their pound of flesh,” he texted at one point, suggesting that the henchman “Ruckus” was ready to drive the car through a building. “Don’t f*** with these guys, I can’t stress the importance of it.”
Another text to the victim read: “You’ll see me soon enough. Ruckus. I’ll find you anywhere. You can’t hide from me, boy.”
The victim relented after Kiro reduced the amount he was demanding to $5500. He finally went to police after his payment was followed by a demand for another $1000.
‘On the right track’
During his most recent sentencing hearing, Kiro’s lawyer pointed out the previous allegations were from almost a decade ago and the new charges were also “relatively aged”. Since his arrest, Grbavac said, his client had worked tirelessly to address his ongoing issues and work a steady job.
He provided the judge with a letter from Kiro’s construction industry employer praising his work over the past six months.
“Mr Kiro is absolutely on the right track,” the lawyer said. “He’s now a contributing member of society. He knows he has issues ... and he’s made a plan around that.
“He has excellent prospects for reintegration and rehabilitation... It’s quite rare I can stand up at a sentencing and say what a difference a client has made.”
In light of the recent strides, Grbavac asked that his client receive a sentence of home detention with a stipulation allowing him to leave home each day for work.
The Crown opposed home detention, noting his offending included threats and harassment. But Philpott acknowledged, when questioned by the judge, that a custodial sentence would impact Kiro’s ability to keep paying his victims.
Judge Winter settled on a sentence of 10 months’ home detention, noting Kiro had already served 63 days in custody while awaiting trial and 291 days on electronically monitored bail.
The judge acknowledged Kiro has been assessed as a “medium to high” risk of reoffending in a pre-sentencing report, but the same report nevertheless recommended a community-based sentence.
The only reasons Kiro isn’t back in prison, the judge said, was because he seemed to be doing well in his employment, he was making progress towards restitution and his rehabilitation efforts have been effective as of late.
He ordered six months of post-detention restrictions after the home detention is completed. They include having no more contact with his various victims, except for the Tinder date who he has been voluntarily paying back and still owes $2000.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
