Legal highlights 2019 (so far)

Got electronic bail for a client on serious charges this morning.

Did the waitangi trust sentencing today. Court took a starting point of 6 years imprisonment. Discounted to an end sentence of 3 years 8 months imprisonment for mitigating factors.

300k multi party fraud. Looking at home detention for my client allegedly the main offender.

An interview on Pakistan TV on Assange last night!!

Legal highlights 2018

Resolved 700k customs smuggling case. Community detention, supervision and community work.

Cold cold day today. Hot result though. Assault with intent to injure reduced to assault.

Cases can take a while if you are looking to get a result that is out of the ordinary. Finished one today. Two charges of assault reduced to one at defended hearing. Client discharged without conviction on the remaining charge.

I went into Winz yesterday and roasted the case officer for a client. Clearly the office was set out in a way to demean people on benefits. The desk we sat at was one of two set out at the front of the office as a gateway to intimidate people. I would estimate it was about fifteen feet to the front reception desk and there was no privacy at all. Also the desk was set right next to another desk with another case officer. There was literally no privacy. It did not stop me. I put that guy straight. He was clearly there to demean my client. The government should be ashamed of the way it treats people.

17k fraud allegation reduced to 5k. 300 hours community work and supervision.

Failing to keep a logbook. Maximum penalty $10000 fine. Client discharged without conviction. Ordered to pay $130 court costs.

Joined the picket line with the Manukau Court Staff today.

https://www.facebook.com/JeremyBiolettilaw/videos/289869264949137/

Legal highlights 2017

End of a long road today. Client charged with assault with weapon. 5 year max imprisonment. Pleaded to reduced charge of assault with intent to injure. 3 year max imprisonment. Successfully mitigated facts. Client discharged without conviction. 

Charge of assault 1 yr imprisonment. Police wanted to amend to injuring with intent 5 year imprisonment but decided to amend to assault with intent to injure 3 yr max imprisonment which was granted by the court. Police then advise that they propose to amend back to common assault. Probably police expecting guilty plea. No way. Police advise charge is now to be withdrawn. 

84 plants in a commercial grow room. Sentence indication of home detention. Thanks we’ll take it. Whew! Loving that fresh air. 

Two charges of assault 1 year prison max each reduced to summary offences assault six month prison max. Charges of assaulting police withdrawn. Pleaded to one charge of resisting arrest and two summary assault charges. Discharged without conviction 

Whangarei District Court. Assault with a weapon. 5 years max. Assault Police 3 year max Resisting and obstruction 3 months max each. Prosecution withdraw assault with weapon. Prosecution amend assault on police to common assault 1 year max. Pleads to common assault resisting and obstruction. Sentence good behaviour bond for six months. Bam thats how you do it. 

Another successful result today. Allegation of threatening behaviour with a weapon. Police did not prosecute. Its great when a case never makes it out of the cop shop.

Live streamed in the High court in Auckland for the Kim Dotcom case and the co-accused US Extradition case for my client Finn Batato.

1) Major Fraud Case

Former National MP Gilbert Myles has been found guilty of obstructing the course of justice, but acquitted on a fraud charge. Myles was accused of being part of a money-go-round involving hundreds of thousands of dollars between 2003 and 2005.He was charged with conspiring to use documents dishonestly in an attempt to obtain a pecuniary advantage, and obstructing the course of justice. Myles, who had interim name suppression throughout the case, pleaded not guilty to both charges.

His name suppression was lifted today after his lawyer, Jeremy Bioletti, offered no objection to his name being published. It was alleged Myles was part of a scam where a company owned by him supplied books to a children’s charity, which has name suppression. A trust owned by co-defendant Robert Briggs, who has also been found not guilty on the charge, was alleged to have provided the charity with a grant to buy the books.

The Crown alleged payments totalling $491,121.98 were made by the trust to Myles’ company, and he profited illegitimately from this arrangement. Myles was today acquitted of breaking any laws through his actions in the arrangement. He was convicted of obstructing the course of justice

for faking a receipt book to obstruct the investigation against him. Bioletti argued during the case that Myles had forged the receipt book out of panic that he had not been keeping proper records of loans made to Briggs.

Myles has been waiting for the last four weeks to hear the verdict as Judge Roderick Joyce QC needed time to weigh up the evidence after a complex four-week trial. His co-accused in the case, Robert Briggs, pleaded guilty at the beginning of the trial to eight charges relating to a similar scam involving tennis clubs around Auckland.

A Christchurch businessman and an Auckland businesswoman were also charged in the case. The man was found guilty of two charges related to the tennis machine scam and has been granted interim name suppression until his sentencing date. His lawyer, Peter Egden, argued he is in ill health due to the combined effect of the stress of the trial and extensive damage to his house in the Christchurch earthquake.

The woman was acquitted of both charges against her. She has been given permanent name suppression by Judge Joyce for reasons that are suppressed. Gilbert Myles was the National MP for Mt Roskill from 1990 to 1991. He left the party that year and became an independent MP, and formed the short-lived Liberal party in 1992. After the Liberal Party merged with Alliance in 1993, Myles joined New Zealand First, but lost his seat in the 1993 election. He re-entered Parliament briefly in 1999, but was not re-elected that year and retired from politics. Gilbert Myles, Robert Briggs and the businessman have been remanded on bail for sentencing.

2) Organised Crime

Four members of a gang that allegedly stole more than $600,000 worth of cheques from post boxes around Auckland have had their convictions quashed.The four included prominent North Shore anti-P campaigner  Elaine Patricia Ngamu and two of her sisters.

In a judgment released this week the Court of Appeal ordered new trials but ruled that the reasons for its decision to quash the convictions should not be published. Ngamu, aged 50, of Beach Haven, was jailed for five years last September in the district court Karen Rowena Ngamu of New Lynn was sentenced by Judge Roderick Joyce to four years and nine months’ imprisonment.

The same term was handed down to her 44-year-old sister Georgina Ryder. The fourth person to have her conviction set aside was Donna Teariki Paul,54, of Te Puke, who was jailed for two years, nine months. They were found guilty with three other people, who did not appeal, of a large number of dishonesty offences at a trial in May last year. Between March 2005 and June 2006 the Crown alleged that the gang stole sacks of mail from various post boxes in Auckland and Warkworth. Mail was opened and cheques were altered to create a false payee. The cheques were then banked and the proceeds withdrawn. Nineteen other people had been recruited to allow their bank accounts to be used and they were allegedly paid a commission for their trouble.

They were involved in a separate trial. A total of 39 cheques worth $671,154 had been stolen and reused, causing a loss to five banks of more than $420,000. A cheque for $205,579.57 from a tile warehouse company was the largest sum stolen. Family trusts, and painting, travel insurance, food, flooring and marine businesses were also hit.

Ngamu hit the headlines in 2005 and 2006 with her anti-P campaign involving a march on Parliament. She worked for Hoani Waititi marae, whose members include Maori Affairs Minister Dr Pita Sharples. The five-week trial before a jury involved more than 400 pages of evidence.

3) Theft Allegations

Article courtesy of James Ellingham of APNZ published by Otago Times It took a jury just 20 minutes to acquit an Auckland tow-truck driver accused of taking an impounded car on an unauthorised high-speed spin.Michael Donald Woods admitted driving the car after towing it back to his yard for the police in 2012.

Mr Woods, who told APNZ he now goes by the name Michael Holliday, said he took the Nissan Silvia on the road to make sure he hadn’t damaged its suspension when he hoisted it on his trailer.He defended a charge of unlawfully taking a motor vehicle on the basis that he had not known he did not have permission to drive the car.After his two-day trial finished in the Auckland District Court yesterday, Mr Woods said the acquittal felt “hollow”.

In August 2012, the NZ Transport Agency suspended his licence to operate as a tow-truck driver because it ruled he he wasn’t a “fit and proper” person, he said.Mr Woods said the prosecution had been a “set up” and he felt let down by what happened to him.When asked who had set him up, the 51-year-old said: “It’s not hard to put it together”.Now the trial was over, Mr Woods said he wanted to focus on patching up his relationship with his family, which had been affected by the charge.

The speed of the jury’s verdict surprised him and it was still “sinking in” last night.“I’d just sat down to read my petrol-head magazine and was about to have a coffee and they came back.“Early on April 15, 2012, Mr Woods was called by police to pick up the impounded Silvia from Mt Wellington.The Crown initially said he took the car on a “joyride” along streets surrounding his Pakuranga firm, East City Towing, but prosecutor Leo Farmer did not use that term in his closing argument yesterday.

Mr Farmer said Mr Woods was caught out by a GPS tracking device in the impounded car, called a Snitch.Its data showed the car hit speeds of 113 kmh and 105 kmh at times on a short trip.When police spoke to him, Mr Woods initially said he followed a carload full of boyracers hanging around his yard, with the Silvia still on the back of his truck. He then changed his story and said he drove the Silvia to make sure it wasn’t damaged.

“If you thought you’d damaged the car, why would you drive it up and down the road at speed? Why wouldn’t you just look at it?” Mr Farmer said.Defence lawyer Jeremy Bioletti told the jury Mr Woods did not handle the police interview well, but said people lied for various reasons.“I just ask you to see if from the point of view of the person themselves,” Mr Bioletti said. “That person may see part of his business crumbling before their eyes, or other consequences.“Mr Bioletti said while the Silvia’s owner, Erin Ashe, subsequently said Mr Woods did not have permission to drive the car outside the tow yard, he didn’t know that at the time.- By James Ellingham of APNZ

4) Human Trafficking

Thats Great, But thats only One Case. Ok here is another one. It took 3 trials to win the case. 

A high-profile Auckland lawyer says human trafficking is happening in New Zealand, but the Labour Department says it can do little unless victims come forward. Jeremy Bioletti, who represented two clients he says were brought to New Zealand from Ukraine to work as prostitutes, said police should have protected them instead of prosecuting them. His first client endured three jury trials with no convictions after she was found to be in possession of a false passport.

She had been accompanied to New Zealand by a “minder” and had been put to work as a prostitute before she was arrested. “She came to me after depositions in her first trial because she’d been advised to plead guilty. We felt that as a victim of trafficking she shouldn’t have been prosecuted, so that’s how we defended her.“After a district court judge discharged her, Crown prosecutors applied for a judicial review and the case was brought back to court.Two hung juries later, the woman was again discharged. Mr Bioletti said she had now escaped her “owner” and was trying to rebuild her life in Auckland.

“Since her case was finished … there’s been two other cases prosecuted by the Immigration Department. The woman I’m now acting for was trafficked into New Zealand by the same organisation, based in Kiev.” Mr Bioletti said police and immigration officials were missing the signs of human trafficking because they were too focused on security. “I think … that because of September 11, border security and passport concerns eclipsed those of trafficking and of people being exploited.”

If his client is deported to the Ukraine, Mr Bioletti fears she will fall back into the hands of the men who sent her here to begin with. “We’ve signed up to an international protocol to protect these women and children from trafficking, so we are obliged to do more and as a fortunate country we should be doing more.“Labour Department immigration manager Steve Watson said it was difficult to help the victims of human trafficking unless they came forward.

"We need evidence, and we’ll follow up on some of the things Jeremy’s raised but he’s speaking on behalf of someone else who might not come forward. We haven’t found any substantiated evidence of trafficking.”

Case Examples