Big-spending accounting thief gets 5 years' jail

Gary Soffe's Tamahere mansion, complete with pool with hydroslide, took a year to build. Locals and tradesmen who worked on it wondered how an average kind of guy could afford such luxury. Photo / Christine Cornege

For years, Gary Soffe was thought of as "one of the family". But for years, he quietly siphoned off millions of dollars from the entities entrusted to him.

With that money the Hamilton accountant treated himself to coastal properties in New Zealand and Fiji, a multimillion-dollar mansion with a hydroslide south of Hamilton, a yacht worth several hundred thousand dollars, holidays overseas and Indonesian furnishings for his home.

Soffe even used money from the trusts to pay his power and rates bills.

The 52-year-old showed no emotion in the Hamilton District Court yesterday when Judge Glen Marshall sentenced him to five years and one month in prison on one charge of false accounting and nine of theft by a person in a special relationship.

The charges, dating back to 2006, relate to Soffe's stealing more than $4.2 million from eight different trusts, all linked to one family.

Soffe was given sole charge of many of the trusts in 1999 when his client passed away. He was also made executor of the man's will.

Crown prosecutor Jacinda Foster said the scope of his offending was calculated and difficult to detect.

He had orchestrated a complex set of entities and used the structure of these entities to disguise his fraud, often under the guise of legitimate transactions.

He used the money to build a showy mansion with a swimming pool, hydroslide and floodlit tennis court.

Soffe also bought coastal properties in Whangamata and Mt Maunganui and paid for trips overseas - often to Fiji - where, one of his former neighbours said, he boasted of his exploits as a bouncer at New Zealand nightclubs.

A former neighbour, who asked not to be named, said Soffe bought lot 12 at Marina Pt in the Fijian resort of Denarau for $1 million a few years ago.

He also had a Riviera boat in Fiji which was believed to be valued at about $600,000.

Ms Foster said Soffe's breach of trust and of his professional responsibilities was cynical and ironic, particularly as a beneficiary of one of the trusts approached him in financial strife.

"His response was callous ... and showed no concern for the circumstances and situation and he used these funds for his personal benefit.

"There was an ingrained sense of entitlement and complete lack of any empathy for the position he placed the beneficiaries in."

Soffe's lawyer, Warren Scotter, argued that the accountant had inherited a complex accounting system that Soffe's client was aware of.

He asked for leniency for his client's early guilty plea, the effect on his family and his bowel cancer.

Before sentencing Soffe, Judge Marshall told him there was a sense of betrayal and disgust towards him from his client's family, some of whom were present in court.

Mr X passed away in 1999. His wife died last year. "You were considered by your deceased employers to be almost one of the family but you took advantage of that for your own personal gain," Judge Marshall said.

Soffe will serve at least 2 years in jail before being eligible for parole.

The IRD caught up with him when it began investigating the significant discrepancies between what he earned last year and what he owned.

He spared little on his enormous Tamahere property - which was listed as being for sale by tender by July 7 in the "minimum: $2.5 million, maximum: $5 million-plus" section of a real estate website.

The property is still listed.