Gerard Peters (inset), charged in connection with an alleged $8.6m mortgage and investment fraud, gained notoriety in 2015 when his Lamborghini was towed after he parked it in a disabled parking space.
Gerard Peters (inset), charged in connection with an alleged $8.6m mortgage and investment fraud, gained notoriety in 2015 when his Lamborghini was towed after he parked it in a disabled parking space.
Members of a single Auckland family make up the majority of those charged in what is alleged to be a complex mortgage and investment fraud scheme that took millions from banks and investors and caused a pensioner to lose her home.
Serene Peters, 66, and three of hersons - Gerard, 33, Christopher, 29, and Robert, 27 - make up four of the six charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) over the schemes late last year.
The two others charged in the broad case, being handled in three sets of proceedings in the Auckland and North Shore District Courts, have name suppression.
Later this morning a defendant, whose name is suppressed, will be sentenced after pleading guilty in late April to four charges of obtaining by deception.
Gerard is understood to have left New Zealand in 2019, shortly after police began investigating. His mother Serene also left New Zealand before charges were laid. Court registrars said there are now “active warrants to arrest for both defendants”.
A spokesman for the SFO said they were “unable to provide any further details” about steps taken to ensure the pair faced justice.
Charge sheets, alleging a total of 37 offences involving the obtaining of $8.6 million and efforts to source $2.9m more, allege two branches of the scheme.
The first involves six residential homes purchased in 2016-17 by entities alleged to be fronts for the Peters family, and then large mortgages taken out across them following the provision of false information to banks.
The properties in question are spread across Auckland, and charge sheets said mortgages were taken from almost all the country’s major banks: ANZ, BNZ, HSBC, TSB and Westpac.
The late Sandra Rosolowski in 2021. She spent the last years of her life trying to untangle mortgage schemes now the subject of a major Serious Fraud Office prosecution. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
The false claims alleged to have been made to banks include inaccurate information about borrower income and debt levels, and gifted sums said to provide minimum levels of equity.
Christopher, Gerard, Serene and Robert are also charged over allegedly obtaining $1.8m from a businessman in 2017 and 2018 purported to be “invested in private banking facilities”.
Christopher and Robert also face an alternate charge of forgery over the $1.8m deal, with the SFO alleging they created a “Financial Guarantee Insurance Policy” document falsely claiming this investment was underwritten by Lloyd’s of London.
The Serious Fraud Office began investigating in early 2021 following Herald reports on schemes which had left participants in financial distress and having lost the title to their homes, which were now heavily mortgaged.
Prior court rulings show search warrants were served by the SFO in May 2021 on three addresses connected with the Peters family, including a storage unit, and the homes of Robert and Christopher, and Serene. Approximately 93 electronic devices - including computers, hard-drives, USB sticks and mobile phones - were seized by the SFO, along with a large cache of printed documents.
Christopher had gone to court representing himself in mid-2022 claiming much of the seized material was privileged, but his arguments were largely rejected.
He also unsuccessfully sought name suppression at that time, saying the negative “optics” of being investigated by and searched by the SFO would complicate his efforts to gain employment.
Late last year Christopher sought name suppression again after he was charged with 23 offences, but after an interim period and arguments in the District and High Courts, this was also declined in May. Christopher told the courts he was unemployed.
The Peters’ 3ha family estate in Stillwater went to mortgagee sale late last year. It sold for $2.1m, significantly less than the $3.8m family had paid for it in 2016.
Sales documents said the property was a “grand French-inspired residence”, and “while the once-mature and beautifully landscaped gardens may currently be overgrown, the touch of a skilled gardener could swiftly restore the grounds to their former beauty”.
Gerard Peters is said to be overseas and has a warrant out for his arrest to answer charges laid by the Serious Fraud Office.
Gerard gained a measure of international notoriety in 2015 after his Lamborghini was towed from LynnMall after being left in a disabled parking space. That car, and five other luxury vehicles, were repossessed and sold by creditors in 2020.
Gerard claims on LinkedIn to be the founder of Malaysia-based company QuantifAI, which purports to offer trading software that gives “the opportunity to compound wealth at unimaginable rates”.
Soon after Herald reports about the schemes were first published in 2021, a cluster of blogs and posts appeared online describing Gerard in glowing terms. One said he was “an ingenious inventor, visionary, entrepreneur, and investment fintech pioneer focusing on the field of cryptocurrency”.
Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism - including twice being named Reporter of the Year - and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting from business newspapers and national magazines.
