$20,000 benefit fraud earns periodic detention

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 4

$20,000 benefit fraud earns periodic detention

A freezing worker who was earlier convicted of defrauding the Social Welfare Department of $20,654 over a period of almost four years was sentenced to periodic detention for nine months by Judge Paterson in the District Court yesterday.

the Judge told Graeme Nelson Fryer, aged 35 (Mr P. D. Lublow), that while the amount was one of the biggest sums for that type of offence, he had decided against a full custodial sentence. Periodic detention was the appropriate penalty, but it would be a long term.

The matter of compensation he left up to the defendant and the depart- ftient. In addition to periodic detention, Fryer was put on probation for 12 months. Fryer, a first offender, had admitted five offences, committed between October 26, 1978, and April 4, last year, in which he fraudulently obtained $20,654 from the department by failing to notify it that he was in employment.

It had been estimated that during that period, Fryer, during his five periods of employment, was paid a gross wage of $33,925.

Mr Lublow, for the defendant, said that demands for a certain standard of living had contributed to the offending. Flyer did not use the money for personal purposes but for maintaining the household. If one took the total amount received by the defendant during the 196 weeks involved and deducted, in round figures, $lO,OOO for taxation purposes then his client would have had a weekly wage of about $220, which was not, he submitted, excessive.

Flyer would make every effort at compensation, said Mr Lublow.

He alleged that the defendant’s former wife, although working at the time, had not contributed to the household finances. It was significant that the unemployment benefit was promptly cancelled when the marriage ended.

RECEIVING CHARGE A clerk charged with having received $3OOO from Mark Cyril Woodall, knowing it to have been dishonestly obtained, was remanded without plea to May 3. Christine Margaret Mary Thompson, aged 20, is charged with having received the money, the property of the Shirley T.A.B. at Auckland on or about April 16. Bail was set at $lOOO. Two men charged with the aggravated robbery of the Shirley T.A.B. were arrested in Auckland last week. They are due to appear in the District Court at Christchurch this week. CHARGE DENIED A man charged that, with intent to injure, he assaulted Darryl Collins was remanded to August 5 for a defended hearing. Joseph Stuart Nathan, aged 37, unemployed (Mr D. C. Fitzgibbon), is charged with having committed the offence on April 15.