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A woman who pilfered just under $500,000 from her employer says she spent most of it on takeaways and clothing.

Ariana Thompson-Bell transferred legitimate payments into one of her four personal bank accounts over two years, and made deposits into her own daughter’s bank account.

Thompson-Bell was jailed on a charge of theft by a person in a special relationship in the Hamilton District Court this afternoon.

Her employer successfully appealed to have their name suppressed by Judge Tini Clark. The employer can instead be described as a “local work skills programme”.

In trying to break down Thompson-Bell’s offending, Judge Clark quizzed counsel Christine Hardy about exactly what the stolen money was spent on.

“It essentially went on funding a lifestyle that was beyond her means.

“I’m talking about lots of money that was spent on things like clothing and fast food,” Hardy said.

Judge Clark pressed: “You’d have to buy a lot of fast food to spend $500,000 or thereabouts, wouldn’t you, Ms Hardy. Was there travel, were there vehicles?”

Hardy replied: “I don’t believe there were any vehicles. And there was one transaction for Air NZ in the thousands of dollars, but by and large it was being spent in small but very frequent amounts.”

$499,972.55 over two years

The offending happened between 2021 and 2023.

Thompson-Bell’s modus operandi was simple. Instead of paying legitimate invoices to service providers, she put the money into one of four accounts she had control of.

In 2023, the chief executive started receiving letters from the IRD and other companies stating that payments had been missed.

The CEO recalled recently authorising payments, so initiated an investigation and found “significant funds” being transferred into one of four bank accounts.

One of the accounts belonged to a staff member, identified as Thompson-Bell.

Police were informed, and examinations were done on her Kiwibank accounts.

They found that between December 2021 and September 2022, $191,073 was transferred into her account.

Between January 2021 and November 2022, she transferred $241,554.26 into her daughter’s account, a further $63,800 into a third account, and $3500 into the account of a kōhanga reo.

In total, Thompson-Bell stole $499,972.55.

Since first appearing in court last year, a total of $66,355.93 has been repaid, which included about $40,000 from her mother.

‘It was unsophisticated offending’

Hardy said that as soon as her offending was uncovered, Thompson-Bell attended a hui with her employer “face to face”.

“And she formally apologised and took responsibility.”

However, Judge Clark noted it wasn’t as if Thompson-Bell suffered a “crisis of conscience”, and fessed up to her behaviour - she was caught.

At the hui, it was agreed that the money would be paid back.

But Judge Clark said that was unlikely to ever happen, given she had so far paid back only about 13% of what she had stolen.

Hardy urged the judge to get down to a sentence of 24 months, which was within range of home detention to allow her to continue to look after her five children.

She explained that Thompson-Bell’s husband was often away for work and would be unable to look after all the children himself.

Hardy described the offending as “unsophisticated”, as all she did was change the bank account number to which the money was being deposited.

However, aggravating the situation for the judge was discovering that Thompson-Bell had just two years earlier qualified to work in finance when she began stealing.

‘It’s greed’

Judge Clark said the injection of those funds would have made a “significant difference” to the quality of her family’s life.

“To provide Ms Thompson-Bell a lifestyle that she desired and otherwise would not have been able to achieve from her own earnings ... clearly, Ms Thompson-Bell and her family have benefited from her dishonesty.”

The judge said she didn’t have any information from the contractors affected, but it appeared as though her employer paid them and then adopted a prudent approach with its spending.

Judge Clark said while the trust managed to meet its financial obligations, “that’s all good and well, but it does occur to me that there’s more than just one victim here”.

Trying to describe the impetus behind the offending, Judge Clark said one word came to mind, “greed”.

“This was not money taken for something essential, where it was a one-off occasion out of desperation or anything of the kind. This was a very warped sense of entitlement to money that she knew ... she was not entitled to.”

Judge Clark said the impact of Thompson-Bell’s sentence weighed heavily with her and also the impact it would have on her children, but found a jail sentence was justified.

She allowed discounts for the guilty plea, remorse, reparation, the impact on Thompson-Bell’s children, and previous good character.

“I have had to be very clinical. From my perspective, I have done as much as I can, and, unfortunately, Mrs Thompson-Bell, it will be 27 months’ imprisonment.”

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at ��һ�ǿ����� for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.