KEY POINTS:
A 71-year-old woman stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her employer, a voluntary organisation for elderly people, to buy a house on Waiheke Island and a hardware store.
Joan Dorothy Roberts has pleaded guilty to five fraud charges totalling $1.14 million brought by the Serious Fraud Office.
She stole about $300,000 from her employer, the Aotearoa Mature Employment Service (AMES), where she was the chief executive.
The organisation helps older New Zealanders retrain and get back into the workplace.
Roberts was also charged with using an AMES cheque to obtain a bank cheque of $58,000 and with obtaining, by deception, loans totalling $782,000 from three different lending institutions.
In 2005, she used the $58,000 to go towards the purchase of a house on Waiheke Island. She then refinanced the house with a loan of $568,000 from Wizard Home Loans and purchased the Hammer Hardware store on the island with loans totalling $214,000 from Easy Factors International Ltd.
The offending occurred between 2000 and 2005.
The SFO prosecuted her on two theft charges, one count of using a document with intent to defraud and two counts of obtaining money by deception.
SFO director Grant Liddell said each charge carried a maximum penalty of seven years.
He told the Herald he did not want to comment personally on the case.
Roberts was committed to stand trial at the Auckland District Court this month after a depositions hearing in October 2007.
She had previously pleaded guilty to two charges of using forged documents.
She has been remanded for sentence on all seven charges.
