Fraudster accountant again convicted of fraud

Recently convicted fraudster Mark Benjamin in 2020.

A former high-flying accountant brought low a decade ago by a fraud conviction went on to reinvent himself as a pig farmer, only to once again end up in front of a judge facing fraud charges.

Earlier this month Mark Joseph Benjamin was convicted and sentenced to nine months home detention in the Manukau District court after pleading guilty to one representative charge of theft by a person in a special relationship over his funneling of more than half a million dollars from his employer to try propping up his own failing businesses.

In 2010, Benjamin was also before the courts, when a judge found him guilty of seven fraud charges over his alteration - as chief financial officer - of his employer’s payroll documents to secretly give himself extra leave entitlements and boost his $165,000 salary by $10,000 per annum.

At that time he was a director of Hortresearch but he lost this role and his registration as a chartered accountant following the conviction.

The more recent court hearing heard Benjamin had gone on to be employed as executive director of East Tamaki piggery Five Star Pork where he had the company make $505,000 in unlawful payments to Kaimai Pork, a pig farm he served as a director of, between January and September 2016.

Kaimai Pork and its parent NZ Pork - also directed by Benjamin - went into liquidation in early 2017. The most recent liquidator’s reports for the two companies said between them more than $8 million was owed to creditors with no assets available to satisfy them.

In 2017, Benjamin, as director of Kaimai Pork, was convicted and fined $8000 for failing to comply with a Waikato Regional Council abatement notice requiring better effluent management.

Five Star Pork director Kevin Monks, who fired Benjamin and took over as chief executive once the fraud was discovered, said it had been a difficult six years as the process - delayed by Covid - wound through the courts.

“Your faith in human nature goes out the door, and you can no longer take people at face value,” he said of the fallout from the fraud.

Benjamin had repaid the stolen funds by late 2017, but Monks said he felt obligated to file a police complaint and see the criminal justice process through to its conclusion.

Monks said Benjamin had initially been recommended by his chairman and he was unaware of his incoming chief executive’s prior conviction.

“He concealed that. When we employed him we could have done our homework a bit better.”

He said he was made aware of Benjamin’s past when the Companies Office informed Five Star he was subject to a disqualification order preventing him from being a director.

Monks said he regretted assisting Benjamin to get that order lifted, and processes put in place to manage both the conflict with Kaimai Pork and risks of reoffending were - in hindsight - inadequate.

“He was able to circumvent those,” Monks said.

Monks said he was happy with the results of the sentencing, particularly the end of suppression.

“He’s a liar and a thief and I’m happy with any sentence that gives him a criminal conviction,” he said.

Benjamin had obtained interim name suppression at his first appearance, and applied on sentencing to make it permanent and for his sentence to be downgraded to community service. These applications were rejected by Judge Gerard Winter.

“Hardship means severe suffering or deprivation. Undue hardship suggests something more and extreme hardship indicates something yet more, again. The various reasons you put up about not only the impacts on yourself, travel aspirations, further media attention ... and the impacts on those dearest to you do not achieve that level of extreme hardship,” the judge said.

Monks was critical of suppression having been in place for so long: “He’s hidden behind name suppression: He had six years of it, and given that it went on for so long, what other damage could he have done in that time?”

Benjamin will serve his home detention at a home in Mt Eden with a rateable valuation of $2.24m.