Bakery Supervisor Sentenced For Theft
March 30, 2015 | Business Crime
Stuff reports A young British woman has been sentenced to 160 hours' community work after stealing from famous Queenstown outlet Fergburger's sister store. Neetal Dandgey, 25, of Fernhill, appeared before Judge Christina Cook in Queenstown District Court today for stealing $2,900. She was sentenced to community work and ordered to pay reparation of $1,085. The remaining balance was deducted from holiday pay and wages. She stole cash from Fergbaker between October 21 and March 2, when she was caught during a company investigation. As a...
Bank Employee Steals $10,000 From ANZ
March 24, 2015 | Business Crime
An ANZ bank employee, who stole $10,000 in cash she was meant to be processing, sometimes hid it in waste bins and in staff toilets before taking it away later, a court has heard. Michelle Kay Portland, 46, was employed as a services consultant at the bank for three years until her resignation in 2013. She has been warned that "all options will be on the table" as she faces sentencing for stealing about $10,000 cash she was meant to be processing. Her defence counsel Louise Denton handed in a cheque from Portland for full repayment of...
Cybercriminals Are Misappropriating Businesses’ Web Addresses
March 13, 2015 | Business Crime
Cybercriminals targeting businesses are stealing more than customer passwords and credit-card numbers these days. Some are misappropriating the very Web addresses—or domain names—of the businesses themselves. When Pablo Palatnik of Miami glanced at a Google analytics report showing Web traffic on his office TV monitor one day last month, he was alarmed to discover that traffic to his business website, Shadesdaddy.com, had plunged 80% from its usual level of as many as 10,000 visitors a day. At first, the 32-year-old entrepreneur suspe...
Auckland Man Falsely Claimed To Be A Plumber
March 12, 2015 | Business Crime
NZ Stuff reports: An Auckland man has been convicted and fined $1050 after he falsely advertised himself as a trained plumber. Jarron "Jazz" Lopez was convicted in the Auckland District Court on Tuesday for doing plumbing work without authorisation, misrepresenting himself as a plumber, and falsely advertising himself as a trained plumber on Builderscrack—a popular online forum for the public to seek the services of tradespeople. Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board chief executive Max Pedersen said Lopez did not hold a plumbing...
Art Scam Hits Auckland
March 5, 2015 | Business Crime
Josh Fagan of Stuff NZ reports: "Door-to-door scammers selling fake artworks are reportedly targeting Auckland, three years after Israeli tourists were caught ripping off people in the South Island. Several Auckland residents say they have been approached at home in recent weeks by young travellers carrying large collections of paintings. The self-described artists have been selling copies of famous pieces, such as the Mona Lisa, for up to $500, according to Mt Roskill resident Nitin Subhedar. Subhedar wrote on social network Neighbo...
Dunedin Petrol Station Owner Stole Fuel
March 5, 2015 | Business Crime
The owner of a Dunedin petrol station used his inside knowledge to covertly steal thousands of litres of fuel from petrol retailers. Mohammed Rizwan Din Khan Hussain, 28, of Auckland, bought Sawyers Bay Motors in 2011, but paid for only one shipment of 2000 litres of fuel. Instead, he used his experience of working three years for a company that serviced North Island fuel pumps to supply thousands of stolen litres of fuel for his petrol station. Hussain appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday on two theft charges and will be ...
Electronic Surveillance - Out of sight out of mind
February 24, 2015 | Business Crime
NZ Security magazine writes: Following the spectacular mass surveillance revelations in the lead up to last year’s national elections - and failure of these revelations to gain traction the issue of internet and electronic surveillance appears to have fallen off our collective radar. But while the election may now be a distant pre-festive season memory, the reality is that the threats to our privacy and livelihoods posed by illicit surveillance haven’t gone away. New Zealand Security Magazine recently caught up with three experts fro...
Germany Limits Spying On Employees
February 24, 2015 | Business Crime
A secretary on sick-leave for two months who was spied on has won a suit against her employer in Germany's highest labour court. The ruling defines when detectives can be used to monitor employees. Only under very limited circumstances can German companies spy on their workers, said judges of the Federal Court of Labor on Thursday, in a case that weighed a complaint by a secretary who claimed she had been unlawfully spied on. "Only when an employer's suspicions of a breach of duty are concrete and based on fact can a detective be u...
Law Could Make GPS Trackers Illegal in US
February 24, 2015 | Business Crime
Some lawmakers say GPS trackers are a form of stalking, but private investigators say they save lives. A new law could get rid of the practice, but not if private investigators have anything to say about it. Thomas Fischer, a private investigator who represents other investigators, says GPS trackers have helped solve crimes. "We had a cab taken in an armed robbery and driver was killed, because of GPS trackers we could locate a cab in a short period of time, made an arrest." He says the proposed law is uneducated. "There is not one k...
Private Investigators Dob In Dodgy Employees
February 24, 2015 | Business Crime
Unscrupulous workers are turning to a fresh batch of dirty tricks to get ahead of office rivals and scam the boss, say the private eyes called in to combat them. Daniel Toresen, director of Auckland private investigations company The Investigators, has been in the business for 25 years, and says checking in on dodgy employees makes up about 70 per cent of his work. In the past year, he has seen an increase in cases where damaging information is shared via anonymous email or social media accounts. Usually, it was "defamatory-type of an...