Former rogue cop John Dewar jailed for company thefts

RNZ News

09-06-2025

By Belinda Feek, Open Justice reporter of
Former Rotorua top cop John Dewar in the Hamilton District Court today when he was jailed for 26 months.
Photo:
Photo / Open Justice
Former rogue cop John Dewar has been sent back to prison after a jury found him guilty of
stealing $113,000 from a finance company
he was the boss of.
It's been 18 years since Dewar was last jailed and that was for attempting to
cover up rape allegations
laid against cop colleagues Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and
Brad Shipton.
The trio was eventually cleared of raping Louise Nicholas, but Schollum and Shipton were convicted for raping a 20-year-old, in Mt Maunganui in 1989.
Dewar - a top cop in Rotorua when he left in 1999 - was jailed for four-and-a-half years, reduced from an initial six years - for the attempted cover-up.
Justice Rodney Hansen found at the time that he would suffer undue hardship as a former high-ranking policeman.
On Monday, Dewar was back before Judge Noel Cocurullo in the Hamilton District Court for sentencing on three charges of theft by a person in a special relationship and three charges of obtaining by deception from a finance company he helped set up in 2015.
Dewar was the brains, while his fellow shareholders provided the financial backing of the company.
The name of the company and its directors are permanently suppressed.
A jury spent eight days hearing evidence last month relating to Dewar's offending between 2015 and 2019 when he stole about $113,000 to help pay off a personal loan, buy weed killer, a spray unit, a toastie machine maker, and Hush Puppies shoes.
Part of his defence was that he was never told not to act in the way he did.
But the jury didn't buy it and instead found him guilty.
Crown solicitor Jacinda Hamilton said Dewar had "blatantly abused a position of trust and confidence by engaging in calculated and dishonest conduct that caused significant loss to a company with whom he was in a management position".
Dewar had significant commercial experience but had "deliberately ignored his obligations of trust and confidence to the other directors and did so largely for his own financial gain".
"Mr Dewar is clearly a competent and capable man ... but here he acted in what can only be described as a calculated way.
"He breached the significant trust imposed on him."
Hamilton said it was a "classic illustration of the old adage, a leopard doesn't change its spots".
"This man cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of those he is entrusted to act for.
"And perhaps worse, he maintains a firm belief that he is entitled to act as he has.
"It is my submission, there is a level of arrogance and entitlement in all of that."
She said the Crown's estimated loss of $150,000 was conservative, as at trial, company directors had claimed it was more than $220,000.
Hamilton said there were no mitigating features of Dewar's offending despite his relinquishing his shareholding in the company, which had since been sold. She called for him to be jailed.
Dewar defended himself at trial, but had lawyer Louis Wilkins at his side offering advice when needed.
Yesterday, Wilkins did all the talking for Dewar and tried his best to keep him out of prison.
He sought a lower starting point of 30 months' prison, then argued there were minimal aggravating features present in Dewar's offending, namely sophistication and the amount stolen.
"Some of the offending in this case is of such a low level, namely, the purchase of household items and gardening supplies and the like.
"It's not especially sophisticated. Cashing cheques is not a sophisticated enterprise."
Wilkins said the thefts involved a "fairly low-grade series of transactions".
"Degree of trust is an aspect, but the attempts at concealment were either non-existent or very minor.
"It appears that the moment any investigation began, it unravelled things fairly quickly."
Wilkins urged the judge to hand down a home detention sentence, citing Dewar's myriad of health issues.
As for his previous conviction, that stemmed from offending "a lifetime ago," he urged the judge not to take that into consideration.
However, Hamilton took umbrage with that comment and reminded Judge Cocurullo that Dewar was jailed in 2007, and about eight years later, he began reoffending.
Judge Cocurullo agreed that Dewar enjoyed a high level of trust and autonomy and that he brought the skillset to allow the company to operate.
At trial, Dewar claimed he'd been made a scapegoat, and told the jury that while he was "clumsy" and "chaotic" at his book-keeping, he wasn't a criminal.
"This may well be speculative ... but it seemed to me that your contention of being clumsy, disorganised and a little chaotic, flew in the face of the quite careful way you organised your approach in the defence of yourself," the judge told him today.
"I suspect that was there for the jury to see, notwithstanding the fact that on a significant number of occasions there were rulings of mine to keep the trial on track."
The judge noted a sense of sadness from several of the victims who felt "somewhat betrayed" by his actions.
"That there had been a solid friendship in many respects, they had been duped by your conduct."
Judge Cocurullo took a starting point of three years' imprisonment and agreed to issue an uplift for his previous conviction.
He then allowed a 15 percent discount for offering up his shareholding as reparation, and a further 12 percent for medical issues before coming to an end jail term of 26 months.
* This story originally appeared in the
New Zealand Herald
.