He sentenced Fannin to nine months' home detention, to be served in Whangarei. The teacher, who recently resigned but was suspended on paid leave while the matter went through court, previously admitted five charges of using a document for a pecuniary advantage and eight of obtaining by deception. Fannin's fraud spree began when he found out about Jamie Stephen Herdman through Facebook.
The Whakatane 26-year-old was last seen hitch-hiking in a remote area of Australia's Northern Territory in November 2006 and his vehicle was found abandoned by a pub.
Fannin got Herdman's birth certificate from the Department of Internal Affairs and used it, along with fake proof of address, to get a driver's licence in Herdman's name. From there, he got credit cards from three banks, which he used for an $8000 spend-up.
Fannin's offending became more sophisticated when he involved two men he taught with at Auckland Grammar, a top boys' school in Epsom. He took drivers' licences from their wallets and repeated his pattern of offending, opening bank accounts and getting credit cards in their names.
When Fannin was caught, at the end of June, he had racked up $67,408 in debt in other people's names. He told police he committed the crimes "to feed an addiction to online gambling". He said he intended to pay back the stolen money from his winnings and viewed the theft as "borrowing".
"But it wasn't anything like that, really," Judge Harvey said. "A person like you would be well aware the house always wins ... it would be extremely unlikely if not impossible you'd win enough gambling to pay the debts you had."
Fannin was declared bankrupt in February 2013.
