HB scam cost home, court told

A man lost his home, and a couple with five children had their power cut off and were evicted from their flat as a sham finance company in Hastings took their money and welched on promises to prop them up with loans.
Those claims were made in the Napier District Court yesterday on the third day of a trial in which Australian woman Michelle Robyne O'Keefe, 44, denies conspiring to cause loss by deception in a bonds-for-loans scam launched by son Timothy Aaron O'Keefe. The amount involves more than $123,000.
Through lawyer Scott Jefferson, she accepted there was a conspiracy, but claimed she was not involved and it was between only her son, who left New Zealand for Fiji shortly before the scam was blown open, and his now ex-girlfriend, Lunibell Orpha Barcelon, 23, who on Monday pleaded guilty.
Now on bail awaiting sentence, the Philippines-born Australia-raised Barcelon became the first Crown witness.
She denied she had been offered leniency, or that her evidence against O'Keefe was motivated by the potential of better treatment at sentencing.
Yesterday witnesses frequently directing comments to the defendant, who sat in court between two prison officers.
Barcelon conceded her evidence in court differed from initial statements to police but she assured Mr Jefferson the evidence now in front of Judge Robert Kerr and the jury of seven women and five men was the truth.
"Why should I lie? She (O'Keefe) should just plead guilty and get it over with," Barcelon said.
"I don't think it's fair that I go to jail and she's sitting there saying 'I'm innocent' when she's not."
An Invercargill mother of five, Natalie Green, told the court she and her partner had scraped together a $1500 bond demanded by the loan firm by missing their rent and power payments. That led to their eviction from their Christchurch home.
"I hope you feel terrible," she said to O'Keefe.
Alexandra man Leslie Smith told the court he needed $6000 to consolidate debt repayment and had sought a loan from the company. He deposited $600 in the company's account when told a bond of 10 percent was required. But the loan never came, the bank foreclosed on his mortgage and he lost his home.
In his opening address, Crown prosecutor Jonathon Krebs said Timothy O'Keefe set up the company soon after he arrived in New Zealand in December 2004, using a false passport in the name of Shannon Brazier.
Mr Krebs said Clearview Finance Ltd was set up in a unit in Brunswick Street, Hastings, to "rip off" desperate people who could not get finance elsewhere and who could not afford to lose what they had.
No loans were raised by the company and it never intended to refund the bonds it got from victims, thought to number at least 96, Mr Krebs said.
The bonds were solicited over three months before Barcelon was intercepted on April 12 last year withdrawing money from a bank on behalf of Timothy O'Keefe who had left New Zealand about a fortnight earlier.
Mr Krebs said the court would be told that when police intervened, Michelle O'Keefe claimed to have known nothing about Clearview Finance until the previous day.
But he said her fingerprints were on numerous documents held by victims or found at the company's address.
Barcelon, who had moved to Australia when she was eight and came to New Zealand with Timothy O'Keefe about four months after his mother, said Michelle O'Keefe handled documents. Listening in court to a recording of an answerphone message to a client in mid-March last year, she said a woman who identified herself as "Sheryl from Clearview Finance", was the accused.
Barcelon admitted she was also involved in the process, initially accepting Timothy O'Keefe's assurances that it was legitimate but became aware there never was any loan finance.
She said that as she was first being interviewed by Detective Kris Eckhold, of Hastings CIB, Timothy O'Keefe rang her several times, instructing her to say nothing to implicate his mother. (Proceeding)
* Clearview Finance Ltd, Michelle and Timothy O'Keefe and Lunibell Barcelon are not in any way associated with Clearview Estate winery and restaurant at Te Awanga.