Man sentenced after TradeMe 'vendetta'

A man who began a vendetta against a senior employee of online auction site TradeMe after being banned from the website was today sentenced in Wellington District Court to home detention.

Nicholas Brown, 40, an IT worker from Tawa, earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of altering a document, two fraud-related charges and one count each of forgery, using a document for pecuniary advantage and a Passport Act offence.

He had been banned by TradeMe for listing items as new or in a different state to the way they were received by buyers, and for not fronting up with other advertised items.

Each time one of his TradeMe accounts was blocked, he would make a new one, and TradeMe eventually sought an injunction to ban him from the site.

The senior TradeMe worker, who has name suppression and was the complainant in the case, approached Brown's employers to ensure he would not access TradeMe from work, resulting in Brown being dismissed from at least two jobs.

Brown than started another TradeMe account posing as the complainant, and purchased an item from a seller.

He also falsified documents to obtain a $12,000 loan and a credit card in the complainant's name, but did not use them.

Brown's lawyer Douglas Ewen said Brown had no intention to cause a loss to the complainant, but liked the feeling of power holding the loan and credit card gave him.

The complainant and TradeMe were somewhat to blame for approaching Brown's employers and causing him to be fired, and Brown was retaliating for this, Mr Ewen said.

Judge Bruce Davidson disagreed, saying Brown's actions could not be justified as being a result of the complainant speaking with his employers.

The charges were "very serious and very disturbing", he said.

"It had the potential to significantly dent the reputation of the complainant and his employer."

He sentenced Brown to six months' home detention with no access to the internet and 140 hours community work.

- NZPA