Charmaine Delores Grogan was sentenced to eleven months jail for stealing $99,000 from a Maori land trust following suspicions she was ‘gaming’ the justice system with two separate guilty pleas for related but overlapping thefts as an attempt to avoid a sentence of imprisonment but home detention for each.
The High Court sitting in Rotorua was told Grogan was sentenced to eleven months home detention in June 2016 for frauds totalling $80,000 committed between 2008 and 2012. She was treasurer of a local Maori land trust. She was responsible for distributing net rental income to the trust’s 480 beneficiaries. She forged cheques to wrongly take trust money.
Eighteen months later, Grogan was again convicted. This time for similar cheque frauds spanning 2010 to 2011, with $99,000 stolen from the trust. This offending was separate from but took place during the period covered by the earlier 2016 conviction. Separately, the two convictions would attract sentences of home detention. Collectively, the thefts in their totality would result in imprisonment. She was not charged with further offending until after pleading guilty to the first. In the High Court, Justice Lang said there were concerns Grogan had gamed the system by reversing a not guilty plea to the first charges so as to prevent the sentencing judge taking into account further pending charges.
If Grogan had been sentenced on all the charges for thefts collectively totalling $179,000 she would have been sentenced to two year seven months in prison, Justice Lang ruled. Taking into account she had already served eleven months home detention on the first charges, Grogan was sentenced to eleven months imprisonment on the second charges.
Grogan v. R. – High Court (30.04.18)
18.091