Covid scammer used his dead dad’s name to swindle relief money

Auckland District Court. Inland Revenue said the man dishonestly submitted 23 applications, trying to exploit the 'high trust model' for Covid business relief. Photo / Nick Reed

A Covid subsidy cheat used multiple identities including that of his late father to pinch more than $100,000 from taxpayers.

Inland Revenue said Harry Singh deployed 16 different identities, only one of them his own, to get the Covid relief money.

The tax agency said Singh was sentenced at Auckland District Court to 10 months of home detention and ordered to pay more than $50,000 in reparations.

Between May 2020 and March 2022 Singh dishonestly submitted 23 applications to Inland Revenue.

The applications related to various financial support schemes the Government had introduced to mitigate impacts of Covid-19 rules on businesses.

Inland Revenue said it administered the schemes under a “high trust model”.

Those initiatives included the Small Business Cashflow Loan scheme (SBCS) introduced in April 2020.

Another was the Resurgence Support Payment (RSP) in February 2021.

In March 2022, when the Omicron variant was running rampant, the Government introduced an SBCS top-up.

Inland Revenue said Singh made various declarations, including that the applicant had the legal right to apply for the loan on behalf of the borrower.

The money was supposed to be for core business operating costs such as rent, insurance, utilities, supplier payments, or rates.

Instead, the $108,000 went to living expenses and a personal loan for a family vehicle.

Inland Revenue said Singh, from Auckland, submitted 16 SBCS applications, six RSP applications, and one for an SBCS top-up.

“He made applications for himself, his ex-wife, his father [who had passed away], friends, wider family members, former clients, and companies he had set up but which never traded.”

Inland Revenue said in May 2020, Singh submitted an SBCS application for National Security Ltd, a company he formerly ran with his ex-wife.

The money went into a joint bank account but Singh then siphoned it off into his account at another bank, using it to pay off a personal loan.

“He also made an application in his ex-wife’s name, falsely claiming he was authorised to do so,” Inland Revenue said.

Court records show Singh in September 2024 faced 23 charges of using or obtaining documents for pecuniary advantage.

He pleaded guilty to two representative charges of dishonestly using a document.

He was sentenced on Friday.

The value of Singh’s offending paled in comparison to that of Luke Daniel Rivers, who ran the country’s biggest known wage-subsidy scam.

Rivers was a crooked accountant who conjured up employees and used a change of name to fraudulently acquire $900,000.

He attempted to swindle a further $724,105.60.

The fantasy world of the Rivers fraud scheme included names of “employees” who had never been in New Zealand.

The court in that case last year heard Rivers repaid about $1 million.

Rivers was sentenced to five years and 11 months’ imprisonment.

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