Man charged with stealing from Kiwibank

Photo / File / Dean Purcell

A man told police he had no idea how $5000 came to be deposited in his Kiwibank account but he had spent most of it, the Dunedin District Court heard yesterday.

Adrian Allan Waldron, 32, fork lift operator, said he knew nothing about a scam in which money was electronically transferred to Kiwibank accounts from ANZ bank accounts which did not have the funds to cover the payments. But he acknowledged he had no right to the $5000 he found in his account on April 26.

He admitted a charge of stealing $4800 from Kiwibank and was remanded for sentence next month. The charge had been amended from one of dishonestly using a document, a Kiwibank bank card, to obtain a pecuniary advantage.

Kiwibank had been the target of criminal offending in the Dunedin area since the beginning of February, prosecutor Sergeant Graeme Evans told the court. So far this year, the bank had lost a total of $29,100 locally as a result of valueless automatic payment fraud. And there had been attempts to transfer a further $7500.

Waldron had previously held a Kiwibank account. He was not known to the complainant whose ANZ account was used in the scam in which $5000 was credited to the defendant's Kiwibank account about 11.10pm on April 26.

Soon afterwards, Waldron went to the Dunedin Casino where he withdrew $4000 cash. He then withdrew $800 cash from a nearby ATM, giving him a total of $4800 cash.

The withdrawals were made before the payments were reversed by ANZ so the loss lay with Kiwibank, Mr Evans said.

Waldron told police he did not know about the scam and was "surprised" to find the $5000 in his account. He withdrew the money and used a small amount to play at the casino, the rest being used to pay off debt.

Counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner said Waldron had not been involved in setting up the scam. It had been set up by someone he did not know.

But when he checked his account and found the extra money there, he withdrew it to pay off debts.

Other people's accounts had also been used and other people were facing charges, she told the court.