A plasterer from Auckland has been sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for defrauding the Covid-19 Wage Subsidy scheme of over $125,000. Deva Brown Phuhathakarn, from Avondale, pleaded guilty to two representative charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage. The charges related to 23 applications Phuhathakarn submitted between March 2020 and March 2021 under his own name and through his company, Complete Plastering Solutions Limited. Nine of the applications were successful, resulting in $125,103.20 paid into his bank accounts. The remaining 14 claims, worth $33,976.40, were declined. Some of the applications included lists of supposed full-time employees, none of whom were actually employed by the business. Inland Revenue records show Phuhathakarn filed PAYE returns for several of these individuals around the same time he submitted the wage subsidy applications, giving the claims an air of legitimacy. Judge Andrée Wiltens described the offending as "deliberate and sustained" and noted it was designed to cheat the system. While credit was given for Phuhathakarn’s guilty pleas, no other mitigating factors were found. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) said 53 people had now been sentenced in wage subsidy fraud cases, with another 51 still before the courts. More than $830 million in wage subsidies had been repaid since the scheme began. But here's where it gets controversial... The case raises questions about the effectiveness of the government's fraud detection mechanisms and the potential for further abuse of the scheme. What do you think? Do you think the penalties are severe enough? Or do you think more needs to be done to prevent such fraud? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
