Victims due to name suppression
An excellent story at Stuff:
A Stuff Circuit documentary, The Fraudster, has revealed the life and crimes of Joanne Harrison, aka Joanne Sharp, aka Joanne Sidebottom. Her Transport Ministry fraud became front page news in 2017, but what couldn’t be reported at the time because of a suppression order was the extent of her crimes.
But after having the suppression order lifted, Stuff Circuit can finally reveal her criminal history, and how she charmed her way through corporate and government jobs in New Zealand and Australia, leaving a trail of carnage and duped senior executives, shaking their heads at the fact they’d been taken in.
She is a serial con artist. Here’s the timeline from what I can see:
- Fake references to gain residency into NZ
- Mid 2000s Tower Corp – falsified her employment contract
- Fake references in court over the Tower fraud
- Changed name to get job with Far North District Council
- Fake references to get job with Victorian state water company
- 2017 – MOT fraud revealed
And how did she manage to keep on offending:
The judge in the Tower case sentenced her to 300 hours’ community service, and gave her permanent name suppression, convinced “the possibility of reoffending is in no way on any kind of cards“.
Well the Judge got that one horribly wrong. Because she got name suppression, she was able to carry on ripping people and organisations off.