An Auckland plasterer who defrauded the Covid-19 Wage Subsidy scheme of more than $125,000 has been sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.
Deva Brown Phuhathakarn, a plasterer from Avondale, was sentenced in the Waitākere District Court on October 15 after pleading 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 thorugh 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.
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