Man Arrested In FBI Bust Has Thousands In Assets Restrained
Press Release – New Zealand Police
Police have restrained more than $650,000 in assets, following the arrest of a Wellington-based man on Friday as part of an FBI investigation.
The man appeared in the Auckland District Court on Friday for his alleged involvement in an organised criminal group that stole cryptocurrency from seven victims valued at US$265M (NZD$450M).
The Wellington High Court has now issued restraining orders under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 for assets valued at $670,000 including cash held in bank accounts, cash held in a lawyer's trust account for the purchase of a property, cryptocurrency, and high value goods.
We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners in the United States to recover assets alleged to have been stolen by the organised criminal group. An interim name suppression order remains in place.
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Scoop
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Call For Pope Leo To Issue Abuse Zero Tolerance Policy
Article – RNZ A Fijian abuse survivor is urging the new head of the Catholic church to adopt a zero tolerance policy for child sex abuse. Susana Suisuiki, Pacific Waves presenter/producer A Fijian abuse survivor is urging the new head of the Catholic church to adopt a zero tolerance policy for child sex abuse. Felix Fremlin was seven years old when he was molested by a New Zealand Marist Brother at his primary school in Suva. Although he had received a written apology and FJD$15,000 (approx US$6,680) in financial compensation from the Marist Brothers Order of New Zealand and the Pacific, Fremlin said it's not enough. Speaking to Pacific Waves, Fremlin said culture and faith prevents many people in the Pacific from speaking out. 'It's a Pacific island thing, everybody looks upon the church as messengers of God, and so for people to talk about it… it's a taboo thing,' he said. Seeking mental health support is also a struggle for Fremlin. 'So here, we don't have any specialists where survivors can go to for counselling. The church here has offered counselling but the counsellors here belong to the church itself. So when you go for counselling, you report back to the church.' Fremlin also expressed his dissatisfaction over Pope Leo's appointment as the new pontiff, claiming the former cardinal had allegedly concealed abuse cases of three women while he served as a bishop in Peru in 2022. However, Fremlin said the onus is now on Pope Leo to stand with abuse survivors, calling for him to enact the zero tolerance law. An earlier attempt was done in November 2024 when former Jesuit priest, Reverand Hans Zollner, joined abuse survivors at a press conference in Rome urging Pope Francis to apply the zero-tolerance law throughout the entire 1.4 billion-member church. The law would effectively remove any priests guilty of abuse from the ministry. For Fremlin, it's about taking concrete steps in protecting the most vulnerable. 'When survivors tried to seek or converse with the church, the church gives them the runaround, and always the lawyers,' he said. 'My experience in Fiji is that they bring up the lawyers and then they hide behind the lawyers you know, so I wish the pope would come on this – it's just something that he can put into law that the survivors can go to, without the church giving them the runarounds.' In a statement sent to RNZ Pacific, the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference said significant work has been undertaken to 'promote a culture of awareness and vigilance'. An immediate risk assessment is carried out once a complainant in New Zealand comes forward. Any risk identified would result in the accused priest to step down. For those convicted of abuse, the conference said the policies in place would permanently remove them from the ministry. The conference also said that abuse survivors can seek a mental health counsellor of their choice. 'If they don't have already a counsellor, the church can provide them a list of counsellors to choose from – with some or all being people without ties to the church.' Even if Pope Leo was to eventually adopt a zero-tolerance policy, Fremlin said it'll do little to restore his faith in the church. 'It's like asking the cow to jump over the moon. It's very hard for [the survivors] to come out openly. 'We're just hoping for something concrete you know, written in black and white, that states they're doing something about it.' Pacific survivors deserve more justice – advocate A long-standing advocate of Pacific abuse survivors said they deserve more justice. Dr Murray Heasley, who was instrumental in Fremlin's case, said the payout that Fremlin and his brother John received is 'outrageous'. 'It's about dignity; it's about human rights,' he said. 'How can you be paying a fraction of the money to a Fijian survivor abused by a New Zealander in Fiji, particularly if you take into consideration some of the notion of the colonial background and the assumption of superiority of Western culture at the time… The colonial mentality seems to still be in place. 'If you happen to be a Fijian survivor that got sexually molested by a New Zealander, you're worth less as a human being? Than a Pasifika abused in New Zealand? Why the differentiation? 'It's absolutely outrageous and it has to be revisited now. The FMS Marist Brothers have massive resources.' The New Zealand Bishop Conference said each case that the church considers is unique and so is each response. Part of the response can include an ex gratia payment to a survivor as part of the 'healing process'. However, they also said that 'comparisons cannot be made between different cases across the various components of each process'. Last year, New Zealand journalist Pete McKenzie broke the story in the New York Times of how the Pacific was used as a 'dumping ground' for accused priests. Heasley said it was a 'standard procedure'. 'It's extremely common to shift predators around. It was called the geographic cure. It didn't cure anything. 'The worst predators were those who were fluent in the local language, Fiji and Samoan and Tongan, because parents trusted them. They used the language to predate and groom.' The New Zealand Catholic Bishop's Conference responded with a statement they had issued last year in response to McKenzie's story. 'We were given 10 or 11 specific names and NONE had any record of allegations of abuse before they were assigned to ministry in the Pacific. It was anything but 'common practice', the statement said. 'Catholic priests and religious [orders] have regularly been appointed to the Pacific Islands to support the faith life of communities there. For many religious orders, the Pacific is part of the same province as New Zealand. 'There is no record of any of the nine men about whom [McKenzie] enquired being accused of abuse before the order of diocese appointed to them to the Pacific. Allegations against some were not received until after their death.' As for Pope Leo's alleged handling of abuse cases in Peru, Heasley said he's concerned. 'We've seen pushback from people inside the Catholic Church calling these women 'liars'. It's an astonishing thing where you have so-called advocates of women's voices, the silence of women's voices coming in behind the pope who they see as a fellow Peruvian because he has joint citizenship.' He said canon lawyer Brendan Daly has called the sexual abuse of children the greatest threat to the Catholic church. 'None of these folks are dealing with this, and even to this point, with this new pope has yet to say anything except to deny the accusation. He has not reached out to sexual survivors, and without that, he is not an acceptable pope.' The New Zealand Catholic Bishop Conference said there are many first-hand reports 'including from victims and survivors of abuse' that have shared their appreciation for how well then-Bishop Prevost handled the cases in Peru. 'He played a pivotal role in having a religious community shut down – which is a rare and severe course of action,' the statement read.
RNZ News
2 hours ago
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Nelson property owner jailed for 20 months after 'kidnapping' meter reader
By Tracy Neal, Open Justice reporter of Paul Hogarty took the meter reader's car keys. Photo: 123RF A power company meter reader "kidnapped" by an aggressive property owner says the event has "projected a darkness on her everyday life". The woman, in her 60s, was left terrified by the ordeal that occurred at a rural property near Nelson where she arrived to read the meter in June 2023. She was confronted by the angry owner, Paul Hogarty, who took her car keys, which meant she was unable to leave the site. While it was not heard in Nelson District Court how he managed to get the woman's keys, the court was told she was stuck in her car at the property for about 40 minutes as a result. During that time, Hogarty had refused to give them back and kept making demands of her in a threatening and intimidating manner. Today, Hogarty was sentenced to 20 months in prison on charges he denied, including kidnapping, after a jury found him guilty in January this year. He represented himself at the trial with help from a court-appointed counsel and was also found guilty of unlawfully interfering with a motor vehicle, intimidation and resisting police. The meter reader had gone to Hogarty's property on the afternoon of June 21. It was a job she had done for many years, Judge Jo Rielly said. After being threatened by Hogarty and having her keys taken off her, she remained in her vehicle because she was afraid of what might happen if she got out. "The words you used to attack and intimidate her traumatised her," Judge Rielly said. The woman told Hogarty she was calling the police but this did not appear to concern him. Judge Rielly described him as someone with "very entrenched personal beliefs about the rights of people in society". When the police arrived, Hogarty, a man in his 70s, then resisted being arrested. "It was abundantly clear that the events were a great surprise to her and caused extreme distress," Judge Rielly said. "She had no way of knowing what would happen to her." Judge Rielly said the victim now suffered extreme anxiety, and felt that Hogarty had taken away her right to feel safe. She now dreaded going to work and had suffered financially as a result. Reading from the woman's victim impact statement, Judge Rielly said the victim wanted Hogarty to know, and believe, that what he had done was unacceptable. Judge Rielly said that some of what Hogarty said at his trial implied that he regretted his actions, even though he had not expressed that directly. She agreed with the Crown on a two-year prison starting point on the lead charge of kidnapping. Hogarty was granted a four-month credit for his personal circumstances, which included a lack of any previous convictions, resulting in a sentence of 20 months in prison. He was granted leave to apply for a substituted sentence of home detention if he chose to put forward an address. Judge Rielly said it was sad she had little choice but to sentence a man of Hogarty's age to a term of imprisonment because he failed to co-operate with the court process. She said the Crown had made it clear early on that it was not opposed to an alternative sentence, and that an electronically monitored sentence would sufficiently reflect the gravity of the offending. Judge Rielly said that had always been her preference. However, Hogarty had made it clear on "more than one occasion" that he would not provide an address. "I have tried to reason with you about that but you have maintained throughout that you do not consent to providing an address so it leaves me no alternative but to sentence you to 20 months in prison," Judge Rielly said. * This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald .
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3 hours ago
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More denials from mushroom murder-accused
Disagree. Disagree. Disagree. Those were Erin Patterson's responses to the prosecution's final three questions in her murder trial. Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC rounded out her marathon cross-examination on Thursday with three suggestions: that Patterson deliberately sourced death cap mushrooms in 2023, deliberately included them in the beef Wellington she served her former in-laws and did so intending to kill them. Patterson has pleaded not guilty to the murders of her estranged husband Simon's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, 70, his aunt Heather Wilkinson, 66, and the attempted murder of Heather's husband Ian. She denies deliberately poisoning her lunch guests on July 29, 2023 when she served them meals that included death cap mushrooms. Patterson was accused of more lies on her eighth and final day in the witness box at the Supreme Court in Morwell in regional Victoria. The 50-year-old was asked about her evidence that she dehydrated dried mushrooms she had bought from an Asian grocer before adding them to the beef Wellingtons. She agreed she never said this to anyone at the time and didn't mention putting the fungi into the dehydrator when she earlier admitted adding them to the lunch. "I suggest this is another lie you made up on the spot," Dr Rogers said, accusing Patterson of hedging her bets to try to make it sound like there were multiple possible sources for the death cap mushrooms. "Incorrect," the accused killer responded. The prosecutor also suggested Patterson lied about taking diarrhoea treatment following the lunch after the 50-year-old earlier claimed one reason she went to hospital was because she thought they would have something stronger. Patterson agreed she did not tell medical staff at the hospital she had taken the medication, maintaining no one asked. "If you were looking for something stronger, you would've told medical staff you had already taken Imodium and it didn't work," Dr Rogers said. "I don't agree," Patterson responded. She was also questioned about her evidence that she had to stop by the side of a road and go to the toilet in the bushes while driving her son to a flying lesson, something the boy denied during his testimony. "I suggest he did not recall you stopping by the bushes on the side of the road because it did not happen ... I suggest this is another lie you told the jury about how you managed the trip to Tyabb," Dr Rogers said. "Disagree," Patterson said. The mother-of-two said she had served her children reheated beef Wellington with the mushroom and pastry scraped off while she had a bowl of cereal the night after the deadly lunch. But Dr Rogers referred to her children's evidence, in which they suggested their mother had the same meal of leftovers the night after the fatal lunch. One of Patterson's children said she "ate the same as us", but Patterson told the court they were incorrect and denied eating the leftover food. She also denied that she "deliberately concealed" one of her phones, referred to at the trial as phone A, from police when they searched her house. Patterson said she switched from phone A to another, referred to as phone B, because the former was "not cutting it anymore". But the prosecution pointed to records that showed regular use from a SIM card in phone A until days after the mushroom lunch. Patterson said she conducted a factory reset of phone B because she wanted to use it and that was the phone she gave police. "I suggest to you that there was nothing wrong with phone A and this is another lie," Dr Rogers said. "Disagree," Patterson responded. Under defence barrister Colin Mandy SC's re-examination, Patterson became emotional as she talked about her daughter's ballet lessons and son's flying lesson. With all evidence in the trial concluded, Justice Christopher Beale told jurors about discussions they could expect before dismissing them for the day.
