Family deported over food voucher scam

The charge related to four separate occasions between April 8 and 24 when Santos obtained $400 food vouchers from the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) welfare package. Photo / File

A Cromwell family has been ordered to return to the Philippines after the father used false addresses to claim Queenstown-issued food vouchers during level 4 lockdown.

The Santos family — Jeffrey Pinlac Santos, 31, wife Marjorie Aguilar Santos, 27, and their 7-year-old son were issued deportation liability notices on October 9, which the family appealed on humanitarian grounds.

This followed Santos, a builder who was in New Zealand on a sponsored work visa, being convicted on September 17 of using a document for pecuniary advantage and ordered to pay $1600 in reparation and to complete 150 hours' community work.

The charge related to four separate occasions between April 8 and 24 when Santos obtained $400 food vouchers from the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) welfare package, which was made available to people who did not qualify for government subsidies.

The scheme was supposed to be a one-off and to qualify, an applicant needed to be living in the Queenstown Lakes District.

Santos initially applied to the council on April 8 and completed the online form using his Cromwell address.

He was subsequently told he was not eligible, as he did not live in the Queenstown Lakes District, and was directed to apply to the Central Otago District Council (CODC) welfare assistance scheme.

He completed the online form on April 9 and subsequently received a $150 food voucher from the CODC.

The same day, he again applied to the QLDC, listing his home address as being in Queenstown.

The QLDC issued him with a $400 voucher for New World Wakatipu.

During, and in breach of, the alert level 4 lockdown, he travelled to redeem it.

On April 16, he used another false address to apply online again.

When prompted to answer "have you filled out the form before?", Santos answered "no".

He then received a second $400 voucher and again breached lockdown to redeem it.

He would follow the same pattern on April 22 and 23, again receiving vouchers and again breaching lockdown travel restrictions to use them.

In total, Santos received $1600 from the QLDC he was not eligible for.

In sentencing in the Alexandra District Court Judge Jim Large described his offending as "quite despicable".

A Immigration and Protection Tribunal decision dated March 2 said Santos told the tribunal he deeply regretted the offending.

His income was halved during lockdown and he was desperate to provide for his family, the decision said.

"The appellant submits that deportation will end the family's dream of living in New Zealand, and that they will return to a very uncertain, deprived and health-endangered life in the Philipines.

"They note that Covid-19 is raging there, employment in their region is virtually impossible to obtain, and the social fabric is unravelling," the decision said.

Tribunal chairman Judge Peter Spiller said the tribunal was not satisfied "exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature in terms of the statutory test" had been met by the Santos family but allowed their deportation to be delayed by three months in light of restrictions on international travel and in the interests of their son.