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A 21-year-old man who was part of a group that fleeced thousands of dollars from elderly victims’ bank accounts has tried to get off without a conviction, arguing it would make it difficult for him to get jobs.

Aaron Robie, of Auckland, is studying engineering and is worried a stain on his record will make it seem like he is “not a reliable or honest person” when he applies for work in future.

But a High Court judge has said “that is the point of a conviction”, and it will establish a foundation against which his rehabilitation can be measured.

“Mr Robie has opportunity now in the early stage of his career to demonstrate his convictions are not material to his future,” said Justice Pheroze Jagose in dismissing Robie’s appeal against his dishonesty convictions.

“That … will better reflect his character and capability than discharge,” the judge said.

“In any event, such stigma is proportionate to the moderate gravity of his offending.”

Robie was sentenced by Judge Claire Ryan in the Auckland District Court last September on two charges of dishonestly using a document, one representative.

Court documents say that when he was 20, together with others, he fraudulently obtained a 72-year-old woman’s bank cards and personal identification numbers, and made withdrawals totalling $11,096.

Robie and his associates also made withdrawals and purchases totalling $2799 from a 93-year-old woman’s cards. Robie personally accounted for $799 of that.

Judge Ryan observed that Robie’s offending was “only a small part” of the group’s “systemic and substantial” fraud, which fleeced nearly $400,000 from an undisclosed number of victims.

A ‘disgrace and a shame’

She called Robie’s offending “a disgrace and a shame” for which he needed to be held accountable.

Judge Ryan doubted Robie’s explanation that he was wilfully blind to what his co-defendants were doing.

Justice Pheroze Jagose says Aaron Robie's conviction will establish a benchmark against which his rehabilitation can be measured. Photo / ��һ�ǿ�����

“If you did not know what was happening, then you had a very high degree of recklessness about it,” she said.

“You could not have simply gone into different stores ... and racked up nearly $9000 in one store, close to $800 in another, withdrawn $2000, without knowing very well that there was something wrong about that,” the judge said.

“You do not just go into banks and withdraw money because your friends tell you to,” she said.

“If they told you to jump off the harbour bridge, you would not do that, you would say, ‘That’s a stupid or dangerous thing to do’.

“There were several opportunities for you to question what was going on or recognise that it was wrong, but you went ahead with it.”

Judge Ryan sentenced Robie to nine months of supervision and ordered him to pay reparation of $5032.

Despite accepting that the convictions would make things more difficult for Robie in starting his prospective career, she declined to discharge the first-time offender without conviction.

Robie appealed to the High Court against Judge Ryan’s refusal to grant him a discharge.

‘Disproportionate’ consequences of convictions

His counsel, Alexander Zhao, argued that Judge Ryan had “inadequately” weighed the “disproportionate” consequences of the convictions against the seriousness of his offending.

He said the judge should not have had regard to the “wider circumstances” of the group’s offending, to which Robie was not a party.

Nor should she have taken into account “additional and aggravating factors” contained in the victims’ impact statements.

Zhao argued that the convictions had a particular weight at the beginning of Robie’s working life, as did their “particular connotations of lack of trust and honesty”.

The police counsel, Nithya Narayanan, however, said Robie was sentenced for his part in group offending in which his associates would have known about, if not targeted, the victims’ vulnerability.

Robie, she said, had “not been proactive” in expressing remorse or making voluntary payments to his victims.

Justice Jagose said the gravity of Robie’s offending was “at least moderate” and he saw nothing in the judge’s decision that made it a miscarriage of justice.

He declined the appeal.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined ��һ�ǿ�����’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.