Inland Revenue Department v Cao [2022] NZDC 5226 (25 March 2022)

Last Updated: 8 September 2023

EDITORIAL NOTE: CHANGES MADE TO THIS JUDGMENT APPEAR IN [SQUARE BRACKETS]

IN THE DISTRICT COURT AT AUCKLAND I TE KŌTI-Ā-ROHE KI TĀMAKI MAKAURAU

CRI-2020-004-009906

[2022] NZDC 5226

INLAND REVENUE DEPARTMENT

Prosecutor v

CHIMING CAO Defendant

Hearing:	25 March 2022
Appearances:	R Duncan for the Commissioner G Qaisrani for the Defendant
Judgment:	25 March 2022

NOTES OF JUDGE C M RYAN ON SENTENCING

Introduction.

[1] Chiming Chao you are aged 39 and married with three children. You have never been in trouble with the law in New Zealand before, but today I am sentencing you for 21 offences committed over a period of six years.

[2] First you have pleaded guilty to 14 charges of knowingly providing false information in your GST returns to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue for the purpose of evading the assessment or payment of tax. The maximum penalty for each of those offences is five years’ imprisonment.

INLAND REVENUE DEPARTMENT v CHIMING CAO [2022] NZDC 5226 [25 March 2022]

[3] You have also pleaded guilty to six charges of knowingly evading the assessment or payment of income tax returns by knowingly providing false information in those returns, again, with the intention of evading assessment or payment of tax. Again, the maximum penalty is five years’ imprisonment.

[4] Finally, you have pleaded to a charge of knowingly failing to keep books required to be kept by New Zealand tax law with the intention of evading the assessment or payment of tax and, again, the maximum penalty is five years’ imprisonment.

[5] I acknowledge the presence of your wife in court today who has spoken on your behalf and for whom this process has been a traumatic experience. When you break the law, Mr Cao, you never only affect yourself and as you now know you have adversely affected your wife and your children.

Facts.

[6] I turn to the summary of facts which you do not dispute. Before I do, I incorrectly stated your age because you were born in 1980 so you are actually aged 41 and you will be 42 at the end of this year.

[7] You have been in New Zealand for 20 years. You have worked in New Zealand since 2005 in the hospitality industry, particularly in fast food operations. In August 2011 you acquired a Noodle Canteen franchise. You clearly knew what you had to do according to New Zealand tax law because you registered for GST. You began trading as Noodle Canteen Henderson.

[8] You also knew enough about the tax laws in New Zealand to file tax returns. You filed GST and income tax returns over the period of six years from the year ending 31 March 2012 to the year ending 31 March 2017. Over those six years your declared total combined family income was $64,188.45, so just over $10,000 per year. Because of that low income, you were able to received Working for Families tax credits for the same period, except the 2016 financial year, totalling $53,345.51 so, again, just over

$10,000 a year.

[9] In March 2014 you and your wife purchased a property in Henderson for

$488,000. You obtained a mortgage of $360,000 to complete the purchase. You arranged for fortnightly fixed repayments to the bank for the mortgage and the total exceeded $20,000 per annum. That was over double your declared family income per annum and in excess of the combined total of the Working for Families credits and your family income. The natural question was, therefore, how were you able to afford those repayments?

[10] In September 2016 you entered into a contract to buy a second property in Pukekohe. It was a vacant section so it took two years to settle. The purchase price for the land was $345,000. You obtained an additional loan of $311,858 from the same bank for the purchase. You began to build a new house on the section. A further

$300,000 was obtained from the bank to complete the new building.

[11] Needless to say Mr Cao there is what we call cross-matching in this country. Your declared annual income, the Working for Family credits, the amount you were paying by way of mortgages and the fact that over the space of four years if one includes 2014 to 2018 you obtained two houses naturally attracted the Inland Revenue Department’s attention.

[12] An investigation into to your tax affairs began because of the low cash percentage returned together with low staff numbers. The investigation showed that between 2013 and 2019 your business returned very little cash, ranging between zero to 4 per cent.

[13] You need to understand the IRD investigators know how businesses like yours worked and this was instantly seen as suspicious. A risk review letter was sent to you and your tax agent on 7 April 2017. On 12 December 2017 your tax agent forwarded to the IRD a voluntary disclosure form stating that $78,000 of cash sales had not been included in the tax returns filed.

[14] Almost a year later, a further voluntary disclosure was made on your behalf by your tax agent stating that $208,000 of cash sales had not been included in your tax returns.

[15] Twenty days later on 28 November 2018 you attend a voluntary interview. The IRD investigator asked you why you had not returned all the cash sales. You said that sometimes you forgot. You said that sometime later your accountants, by which I think you meant your tax agent, told you so you knew you needed to return the cash and you said you would not do it anymore, that is, not fail to record the cash returns anymore. You said you kept the cash in a bag like a backpack, took it home and then took it back to work.

[16] I accept that some Chinese people, usually a lot older than you I might add, keep cash at home as opposed to banking it and use cash for day-to-day transactions. It does not mean that you can avoid keeping records about it or about disposing of it. The fact that you did not bank it does not mean you did not have to tell Inland Revenue you have it. You know that. Your guilty pleas confirm that:

• (a) You knowingly provided the Commissioner of Inland Revenue Department with six false personal income tax returns with the attention of evading the assessment or payment of tax amounting to

$61,061.05.

(b) You knowingly provided the Commissioner of Inland Revenue Department with 14 false personal GST returns with the intention of evading the assessments or payment of GST amounting to $56,995.98.

[17] While you obtained $50,345.51 from Working for Families, the summary of facts records at paragraph 21 that you obtained Working for Families tax credits of

$22,302 to which you were not entitled. Putting aside the Working for Families tax credit, the loss to the Inland Revenue Department was $124,057.03, which you have repaid.

No previous convictions.

[18] You have no previous convictions as I have mentioned.

PAC.

[19] The Provision of Advice to Courts report records that you said you had not been aware of the tax regulations, but you did not otherwise provide any excuse for your prolonged offending by which Ms Lewis the probation officer means over six years. You said you were willing to repay the tax credits. You have.

[20] The probation officer assessed you at being at a low level of re-offending. The sole offending related factor is identified as your offending-related attitudes. In other words you decided that to provide for your family, to secure to houses and to show to your community some sign of success you would not disclose everything that you had earned for the purpose of proper assessment of GST and PAYE or income tax.

[21] You have no rehabilitative needs. If you do not have an accountant as opposed to a tax agent, you might want to consider having one. However, a rehabilitative sentence is not recommended.

[22] The starting point for offending such as this is imprisonment but it is open to this court, as both the lawyer for the Inland Revenue Department or the Commissioner and your counsel acknowledge, to impose an end sentence less than imprisonment but which will require electronic monitoring.

[23] The probation officer recommends community detention and reparation, because it will allow you to work to support your family and to repay any tax credits outstanding. The probation officer also suggests community work as an extra punitive sentence. But your lawyer has submitted that given the hours that you work, such a sentence will be impossible and would set you up to fail.

[24] The probation officer confirms that you have been in New Zealand since 2002. You came to New Zealand sponsored by your sister who was already married and living here. You have family members in China and New Zealand.

[25] You have arthritis for which you are medicated. You have stomach issues which are referred in the medical notes as “reflux” which are exacerbated by stress and I accept that. Your health is technically suitable for any EM sentence. Your work hours are specified in the report so that if I impose a sentence of less than imprisonment and I reach a sentence of community detention, those hours can be specified.

Submissions on behalf of the Commissioner.

[26] I turn to the submissions first on behalf of the Commissioner and then by your lawyer. The Commissioner’s lawyer submits that between 20 and 22 months’ imprisonment should be the starting point. She reasonably accepts that there will be some discounts for your guilty pleas and acknowledges that up to 25 per cent is available, 25 per cent being the maximum available at law. She acknowledges that I may give you some credits for previous good character.

[27] She does not mention this in her written submissions but acknowledges that some of the cases and authorities say that discounts can be given for voluntarily repayments of amounts owing because not everyone a Court sentences is able to repay. The reasoning of higher Courts binding on me is that if you have repaid the whole lot there has to be a discount. She accepts that.

[28] The Commissioner submits that the relevant aggravating features of the offending are as follows:

• (a) The extent of loss or harm. The loss was over $124,000. That has been repaid. However, you have caused a loss to the community which represents a debt to the Commissioner and ultimately the wider public. As Judges in other cases have said, offending of this type is nothing less than theft from the community.
  
• (b) The unfair advantage afforded to you because you had use of that tax shortfall for over six years.

• (c) Premeditation. She acknowledges that offending of this nature is inherently premediated. I observe that it is impossible to accidently knowingly fail to provide proper tax records and make disclosure. In my view premeditation is inherent in this offending and does not warrant an uplift.
  

[29] However, the Commissioner’s submissions in my view give rise to five further points which I consider I must take into account:

• (a) Tax returns, GST, income tax, and PAYE rely on the honesty and their voluntary disclosure of those who should be paying tax. It is impossible for the Commissioner to carefully supervise and monitor every single person who should pay tax in this country. So it is the responsibility of tax-payers like yourself to properly disclose.
  
• (b) The second factor is that when members of the public see you doing this, they ask why they cannot do it too.
  
  • (i) Deterrence and denouncement is a very important aspect of sentencing. If people falsely send returns into the Commissioner and as a result evade tax by hundreds of thousands of dollars the message sent out to the community by the sentence imposed is that such behaviour will cost. Copycat offenders will weigh up the costs against any benefit achieved by evasion and if the cost is too high, they will think twice.
    
  • (ii) A light sentence does not send the message out to the community that this is offending to be avoided. Rather it sends out the message that people can, to put it bluntly, rip off the Commissioner and the New Zealand public with impunity and get away with it.
    
  • (iii) That is why a sentence for this type of offending must involve loss, inconvenience and hardship to a defendant so that the

defendant and everyone else can see that it is not worth doing. The consequences must deter people from trying this out or trying this on.

(c) A further aspect of sentencing that springs from the Commissioner’s submissions is that those who do honestly disclose to the Commissioner, do honestly pay their tax and do honestly keep their records for inspection are effectively carrying those of you who do not. They pay the tax to enable people like you to take for free the community’s benefits which the taxes have provided. The Commissioner refers to the decision of R v Campbell1 in which his Honour Judge Tuohy held:

There also seems to be an underlying sense of entitlement in that benefits the community provides from taxes, roads, schools, hospitals, police et cetera are all enjoyed but there does not seem to be any problem with failing to contribute to them.

So that sense of entitlement, in contrast to those who recognise why they should be paying taxes, needs also to be expelled by the sentence imposed.

(d) This is as I have mentioned theft from the community. The money you have kept to benefit yourself and your family illegally is money that could have provided for goods and services for all New Zealanders which is what the tax regime is all about.

(e) Finally, tax evasion offences and providing false information undermines the public’s level of trust in the Commissioner, in the tax system and in the Inland Revenue’s ability to ensure compliance.

[30] The Commissioner has examined several cases which support a starting point of 20 to 22 months. A case close to yours is that of R v Ching and Ruansook.2

1 R v Campbell DC Wellington CRI-2009-091-001616 at [15].

2 R v Ching and Ruansook [2015] NZDC 11672.

[31] Mr Ching and Ms Ruansook did not do as you did and plead guilty but went to a jury trial and were found guilty of six representative charges of aiding the evasion of GST payments and six charges of evading the evasion of income tax payments. The amount of GST evaded was $47,527.16 whereas yours was a little higher at

$67,061.05. The total amount of income tax evaded was over twice yours at

$119,374.40. The total period was six and a half years so a little longer than yours. Reparation of almost $167,000 had been repaid at the time of sentence.

[32] Twenty two months’ imprisonment was the appropriate starting point. His Honour Judge Zohrab observed that the offending had occurred over a long period of time and the amount involved was significant. He could not give Mr Ching and Ms Ruansook a 25 per cent discount which you will be getting because they did not plead guilty. He did give them a 15 per cent discount for full reparation and five per cent for the personal toll the matter had taken on them. Mr Qaisrani for you asks that I impose similar discounts today.

[33] His Honour Judge Zohrab concluded that home detention was the appropriate response, but there were certain factors in that case which led him to reduce the sentence of home detention which do not arise in your case. The end sentence was six months’ home detention and 120 hours of community work.

[34] In the case of the R v Lam again there was a jury trial and Ms Lam was found guilty of less than a third of the charges she faced, namely 36 of 115 charges.3 Five of the charges were for false and misleading tax returns because they omitted cash sales that had come from her restaurant business in Lambton Quay. Other charges were related to false and misleading GST returns.

[35] Ms Lam’s offending spanned five years and the total tax evaded was $91,615 which was fully repaid by the time of sentencing although I note his Honour made a reparation order for that amount at the conclusion of his sentencing. He held that the premeditation and length of time that it went on made the offending worse, while in my view premeditation is inherent in the offending. 18 months was the starting point.

3 R v Lam NZDC Wellington CRI-2011-085-001746, 9 March 2014.

Her good record allowed a discount of four months. The end sentence was 14 months’ imprisonment so seven months of home detention was imposed.

[36] His Honour declined to impose community detention because he considered that was considerable for young people only, not for adults for whom home detention is more appropriate. Since that time several courts have approached community detention in a broader way which is why your lawyer asks me to impose it today.

[37] The next case that the Commissioner relies on is Inland Revenue Department v Ali.4 Mr Ali pleaded guilty to 11 charges including seven charges of knowingly failing to provide information including tax returns and tax forms, intending to evade the assessment or payment of tax. There were four other charges of aiding and abetting Mr Ali’s company to fail to provide information to the Commissioner including tax returns and tax forms, intending to evade the payment of tax. The failure to provide tax returns spanned eight years and the amounts that was evaded was $263,433.64. The starting point was two and a half years imprisonment. I immediately note that the length of time of the evasion and the evaded amounts were greater than yours.

[38] Mr Ali took his time to plead guilty so he only received a 20 per cent discount. Two years’ imprisonment was the end sentence. The judge decided to give him 12 months of home detention, 150 hours of community work and full reparation was ordered.

[39] A further decision is Campbell, the case to which I have already referred. Judge Tuohy sentenced Mr Campbell after he was found guilty of seven charges at trial, four involving aiding and abetting a company to provide false GST returns to evade payment of GST, one of aiding and abetting the company to provide a false income tax return with same intent, one of aiding and abetting another company to knowingly not provide a tax return, intending to evade the assessment or claiming of GST and finally a charge of abetting that second company or second trust to evade the payment or assessment of GST. That was a case where the quantum was not entirely fixed. We prefer these days for the quantum of loss to be fixed.

4 Inland Revenue Department v Ali [2017] NZDC 4265.

[40] There were two periods of offending over one year in 2004 and over two years between 2007 and 2008. The loss was about $150,000 so slightly greater than yours. There was no remorse and no real acceptance of criminal wrongdoing. It was not the worst offending of its kind.

[41] The Crown submitted the starting point should be two to two and a half years. Defence counsel submitted a starting point of 12 to 18 months. His Honour noted there is no tariff but he decided that a starting point of 21 months was appropriate which he reduced 20 months for Mr Campbell’s previous good character, because except for the tax convictions there was no previous dishonestly. His Honour decided that home detention was appropriate. He also added 250 hours of community work and ordered reparation to be made.

[42] The Crown says when reference is made to all those cases, R v Lam is slightly worse than yours Ching and Ruansook is about the same and so 20 months is an appropriate starting point.

Defence submissions.

[43] Your counsel submits that a starting point of 20 months is excessive. He accepts that that there needs to be an element of punishment or deterrence or denouncement in the sentence but asks me to take into account your personal circumstances. He submits that first of all that at the time of the offending you had serious cashflow issues with your business. You were struggling to make ends meet. Your children were very young and the offending was committed in the hope that the increased cashflow would help stabilise your difficult financial position.

[44] He says you were under real financial pressure as well as psychological pressure when seeing your young children in comparison with fellow students who were better off and who could attend extracurricular activities while your children could not. I find that difficult to accept given that during this time period when you say you were struggling to make ends meet you bought two properties.

[45] He makes the point that more credit can be given for voluntary reparation which you have done than involuntary contributions, for example when the Inland Revenue Department seizes, deducts or compels payment. He refers to the old case of R v Patterson in which there was a substantially greater loss as a result of dishonesty than in your case.5 Nonetheless the principle in that case is that when an offender exhibits genuine remorse, has done their best to atone financially for the fraud whether by selling assets - in your case a property - or borrowing or promising to make recompense, credit is appropriate as a mitigating factors. In cases where people have repaid it all, that must be taken into account.

[46] Mr Qaisrani refers to the case of Zaheed v R.6 As he points out, the tax evasion amounted to double, or just under double the amount of your evasion. Half was recovered. The starting point of 27 months was reduced to 19 months and home detention was substituted on appeal. His point is the vast majority of what was recovered was involuntary and that huge amounts remained outstanding but nonetheless the end sentence was still 19 months.

[47] He says that an appropriate starting point for you would be below one and a half years’ imprisonment. In Zaheed, the starting point was 27 months and the end sentence was 19 months or one year and seven months but I consider that one does not simply halve a starting point because the amount is half another case. A sentencing must be more nuanced than that.

[48] He refers to the case of R v Klintcharova.7 Evasion took place over two and a half years and almost $147,000 was involved so a little more than yours. The defendants he said were not well placed to pay reparation. The sentence indication to which he refers is not attached to submissions is not attached, but I accept what he says, that a starting point of about 15 months’ imprisonment was suggested while the defence suggested 12 months’ imprisonment, and the end sentence was to be home detention or community detention. He submits that this is similar offending to yours, although over a much shorter period of time, so that a 12 to 15 months sentence is

5 R v Patterson [2008] NZCA 75.

6 Zaheed v R [2010] NZCA 573.

7 R v Klintcharova [2013] NZHC 2778.

appropriate for you. He says that even the Crown’s submissions would seem to support a similar range.

[49] In one case one year’s imprisonment at least was suggested in relation to almost

$200,000 but that, of course, was a Solicitor General’s appeal so the sentence in such a case is always limited. A starting point of 18 months’ imprisonment was for

$183,000 and there was no, or very little reparation. In another case 12 months was imposed for evasion totalling $100,000 and he says that must have been the final sentence. So, when one takes these into account a lesser starting point than what is submitted by the Crown is appropriate.

[50] He then says that you should obtain a discount, because you were brought up in China, where your perception of tax officials was very negative. No cultural report confirms this but he asserts from the bar that your belief was that the tax officials were corrupt and there was no point in paying tax as the money was going to end up in the wrong hand. He says it was an erroneous belief about New Zealand officials.

[51] However, that does not square with your application to be GST registered, filing returns and obtaining a tax agent. If the Inland Revenue Department was so corrupt, why did you then register at all? Why did you declare any tax? Why would you claim Working For Families credits from corrupt officials? You have been here 20 years and you must know there is a huge difference between Chinese officials, if they are corrupt, and New Zealand officials.

[52] You have attended Asian Counselling Services. The comments you reportedly made do not help you because there is no remorse, but instead you claim that you were the victim because you were picked on by Inland Revenue Department and do not trust the New Zealand legal system because of its language and cultural barriers. You have to work within the New Zealand system because you are living here, so it is pointless saying you do not trust it.

[53] Mr Qaisrani argues that you are remorseful as shown by your suffering with physical and mental depression and fatigue. The reports with which I have been provided show your worry about the shame and stigma of your convictions and the

fact that you have been caught. There is no acknowledgement that this was wrong, no apologies to the people of New Zealand and no suggestion that you have learned the hard way and you will not do this again. The reports and letters are filled with complaints about your health ailments, the toll this process has taken on you and how both you and wife would like it all over so you can get back to the way you were. That is not remorse but a sense of grievance that you have been caught and that the court process has been hard on you. There is in my view very little remorse shown in any of these documents.

[54] Your counsel says that you have been home schooling your children. Children are now back at school but perhaps he meant during, but it may well be that you were home schooling last year. I accept you are going to counselling because of depression and anxiety which is to be expected when you commit offences like this and face a starting point of imprisonment. There would be something very concerning if you were not suffering anxiety and concern because that itself can be an effective deterrent.

[55] While you talk about corrupt Chinese officials you still also acknowledge the shame and stigma in your social circle of breaking the law. So on the one hand, the officials are corrupt yet on the hand breaking the laws of those corrupt officials is bad. It does not add up, Mr Cao. In my view, the shame and stigma is because you know very well that this offending was wrong, that there are no corrupt officials in the Inland Revenue Department, you never believed there were but you decided that in order to show success in the community you would evade tax so your family could be in a very strong financial condition.

[56] I accept that you have medical issues including your inflammatory arthritis, your reflux, and you have also at one stage broken your leg just below the shinbone. I accept your counsel’s submissions that it is unlikely you are going to re-offend or appear again before this court because and if you do, Mr Cao, you know you will be imprisoned, so that is a very strong deterrent factor.

[57] I also accept that you are the breadwinner for a family of five, including your wife Mrs Cao and your three children and that you want your children to see you as a

good person. A conviction and a jail sentence are going to show them that you are not and this will badly affect them.

[58] Your counsel submits there was a lack of sophistication. Well, most tax evasion lacks sophistication which is why you are caught. It involves hiding your money from the authorities and not paying full tax. I accept that is not sophisticated but it is still wrong. I do not consider that a mitigating factor at all. Those who are more sophisticated in evading tax might attract a higher starting point, but less sophistication or a lack of it does not earn a discount.

[59] Your counsel submits that the evaded tax payments were not spent on a lavish lifestyle. No it was spent on two houses. Mr Cao there are not too many people around who can boast the ownership of two houses. So, it may not have been on a lavish lifestyle but it certainly was a lifestyle that showed your community that you were successful. It is just that you stole money from that community by evading tax to show that you were successful. Of course, you were doing it for the betterment of your children, everybody who has children wants to do that but you do not lie, steal and cheat to better your children.

[60] Your counsel says that a strongly punitive sentence will have an adverse effect on you and that is true for most defendants in this court. There are very few for whom imprisonment or even home detention is an easy or happy experience. I accept that it will affect you adversely. It is meant to. It is meant to teach you that you cannot do this again.

[61] Your lawyer strongly presses me for community detention rather than home detention because he says that will enable you to work long hours. You will then be able to pay your due share of taxes. You need to be on site 12 hours per day during the week and if you cannot do that, then it will make it hard for you to make ends meet because to employ an extra person will make the business unprofitable.

[62] I doubt that very much. The business was profitable enough to buy two houses and even if you paid all your tax, those two houses in total are almost three times the amount you would have paid in tax. So, I dispute that employing somebody would

make your business unprofitable.. But I accept that it might a problem to hire your wife as she is taking care of your children. She is able to support you but she cannot run the business 12 hours a day.

[63] Mr Qaisrani asks me to acknowledge your prompt guilty plea which was entered earlier than most of the people in the cases before me cited by both lawyers and in fact some of the people took the matter to trial and were found guilty, so you will definitely receive a discount for that.

Analysis.

[64] In sentencing you Mr Cao I must take two steps. The first step I must take is to fix a starting point and uplift it for any aggravating features. The second step I must take is to reduce that sentence for your personal factors.

[65] I turn to the starting point First, this was substantial offending over a long period of time. You face 21 offences over six years and a total of over $124,000. Second, not only did you file 14 erroneous or false GST returns and seven income tax returns, you also, unlike many of the others whose cases have been cited to me, failed to keep and maintain the required books or documents which impeded the Inland Revenue Department’s investigation.

[66] I accept that your offending is less serious than R v Lam but in my view it is similar to Ching and Ruansook so a 20 month starting point is appropriate.

[67] There are no aggravating features in my view other than those I have taken into account to fix that starting point, namely the five factors I outlined earlier and the fact that there needs to be a deterrent and denouncing sentence for offending of this type, over this period and involving that amount.

[68] I then turn to the mitigating features. I accept that you pleaded guilty promptly. The maximum discount I can give you at law is 25 per cent. So that is five months. I turn to the fact that you have paid reparation in full and in my view just as

Judge Zohrab did in Ching and Ruansook I am going to give you a 15 per cent discount for the amount you have paid which is three months.

[69] I take into account that you have not previously offended, that you have a supportive family and that they will be the innocent victims if I jail you, a factor taken into account by the Court of Appeal in Heta v R.8

[70] So I take into account, your health, your supportive family, the impact on them and the fact that you have not had any previous convictions. I am going to give you a 10 per cent discount or two months. So, all in all I am giving you a very generous discount from those 20 months because those discounts total 50 per cent. So, I reduce the end sentence to 10 months’ imprisonment.

[71] If the end sentence is less than two years I have to look at what sentence I must impose on you. Usually, but not always, a sentence of home detention is about half the sentence of imprisonment. In my view community detention is too low a sentence. It does not take into account the seriousness of your offending, is not sufficiently deterrent and would require a large and artificial reduction from 10 months’ imprisonment. Home detention is appropriate.

[72] I am going to impose five months of home detention and because it is less than six months I am not going to impose any post-detention conditions. So, you will serve a sentence of home detention for five months and the conditions are as follows:

• (a) You are to travel directly to [address deleted], Henderson on the day of sentencing, which is today and await the arrival of the monitoring company.
  
• (b) You are to reside at that address for the duration of the home detention sentence.
  
• (c) You are to comply with the requirement of an electronically monitored sentence as directed by the probation officer.
  

8 Heta v R [2012] NZCA 267.

(d) You are to undertake any assessment, counselling, or programmes as may be directed by the probation officer.

(e) You are not to undertake any employment paid or unpaid without the prior written approval of the probation officer. I ask the probation officer to be mindful of the fact that you already have a job, that it requires up to 12 hours per week-day, that it is essential that you work to provide for your family and for your own self-esteem and mental health, and to pay tax so you do not get into the same position again in a few years’ time.

[73] So, your sentence is five months of home detention. I am not going to monitor it. I am putting you on trust. I do not expect to see you in my court again.

Judge C M Ryan

District Court Judge | Kaiwhakawā o te Kōti ā-Rohe

Date of authentication | Rā motuhēhēnga: 04/04/2022