Rebekah Hicks, also known as Rebecca Harris, was convicted of theft and sentenced to two years two months’ imprisonment following thefts and false invoicing frauds affecting successive employers netting nearly $80,000.
The first employer, anonymised as company A, provided sandblasting and zinc coating services. Four years after Hicks started work, the company identified she was stealing cash payments made by customers and supressing invoices for these transactions. Further enquiries identified that she was creating false transactions to cover transfer of company funds to a Kiwibank account she controlled and that she had been having her personal car serviced with costs charged to the company account. Hicks admitted the thefts and resigned.
The High Court was told she immediately started work at a separate company concocting a story that she had left her previous job for health reasons. Within months she was stealing from this company, diverting customer payments into her bank account.
Hicks pleaded guilty to four representative charges of theft by a person in a special relationship. She appealed a District Court sentence of two years two months’ imprisonment. The sentencing judge did not give adequate allowance for a familial trait of compulsivity and impulsivity coupled with the stress of ill health and her having to financially support a family and her mother, she said.
The calculated nature and sophistication of her offending meant there was no apparent link between her claimed personality traits and the admitted offending, Justice Osborne ruled. The sentencing judge made adequate allowance for these factors in sentencing, he said.
Hicks v. Police – High Court (28.02.22)
22.046