Vincent Smith, now 37, has a history of testing the patience of judges. Photo / Michael Craig
An arrest has been ordered for a fake immigration officer after he failed to show up to his sentencing today.
Vincent Smith, who was sentenced to prison in 2018 for using the immigration ruse to steal more than $220,000 from multiple victims, told his lawyer today that he couldn’t attend Manukau District Court because he was in hospital.
Judge David McNaughton was unmoved.
“Your client is a serial conman, so I would not believe anything he said,” the judge told defence lawyer Gul Qaisrani, adding that the arrest warrant would be reconsidered if the court was provided a doctor’s note.
Qaisrani said he had already warned his client that a note would be required, but had not received one by the time the hearing started.
Smith, now 37, has a history of testing the patience of judges.
During his previous sentencing in February 2018, Judge Russell Collins made special note of the defendant’s excuses and false promises throughout the case. He had failed to appear for one sentencing date after claiming a case of temporary blindness.
After resetting that hearing, Judge Collins had warned Smith’s then-lawyer that if the defendant failed to show up next time, the judge “would need to see a photograph of him with a neck-to-foot cast” to avoid being the subject of an arrest warrant.
Smith did show up to the next sentencing date but asked for it to be postponed again, explaining through his lawyer that he believed he was suffering from bowel cancer. In the absence of any medical evidence, the judge declined the request.
Smith was sentenced in 2018 to two years and four months’ imprisonment on three counts of obtaining by deception and two charges of impersonating an immigration officer.
Court documents from that case state Smith targeted four victims in 2016 and 2017.
He scammed a student out of $27,000, going so far as to meet the victim outside the Manukau immigration office while collecting cash. He stole $98,000 from another student who wanted to attend nursing school in Australia, falsely claiming that some of the pilfered money had been paid to the Australian embassy as fees.
Another $98,000 was stolen from a British couple who said they needed help immigrating due to an earlier traffic-related conviction. He had called the couple, introducing himself as an immigration adviser, after seeing an ad they had placed about a rental car.
The couple called police after he didn’t return their passports.
The latest court documents show Smith returned to his old ways in 2022, targeting a kitchen employee at Middlemore Hospital while Smith was admitted there.
The victim, who was having trouble with a partnership visa, agreed to pay Smith after he claimed to be an immigration officer with the power to clear her husband’s criminal record and greenlight the visa application.
Days after the first cash payments, Smith showed up at the woman’s home and convinced her to hand over her bank card and PIN, explaining that he needed it to file one last report. He promised to return with the card the next day.
The woman cancelled her card when he still hadn’t returned three days later, but by that point $12,800 had been spent.
“A few days later, the defendant returned to the victim’s address asking for her passport and Westpac account number, and he claimed the withdrawals of $12,800 were for paying bond to New Zealand Immigration, promising a refund once her husband arrives to New Zealand,” court documents state.
“The victim refused to give him any more money.”
Smith continued to message the woman seeking more money, but she “eventually realised she was being scammed”, according to the summary of facts Smith agreed to.
He now faces up to seven years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to obtaining by deception and up to one year in prison for impersonating an immigration officer.
He also pleaded guilty to scamming multiple retail outlets throughout Auckland, often via schemes that involved refunds using forged receipts.
The scam was repeated at Briscoes outlets in Mt Roskill, Takanini, Silverdale, Panmure, Botany Downs and Westgate, and at Mitre 10 outlets in Albany and Glenfield.
During one of the schemes, he entered a Briscoes store pushing a trolley with an empty box. Once inside the store, he swapped the empty box for one containing a $1600 coffee machine. He then received a refund for the coffee machine with a fake receipt.
When eventually arrested for the retail fraud, Smith said he had been doing it to support his partner.
After ordering the arrest warrant today, Judge McNaughton said he wanted the matter returned to him for sentencing rather than assigning the task to a new judge.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the United States and New Zealand.
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