The home burgled in October 2024 as part of a retribution plot has been previously described in sales materials as a "majestic Epsom mansion".
Two young men who participated in a terrifying middle-of-the-night burglary inside an Epsom “mansion” said they were hired to do so as part of an ill-advised vigilante justice plot by someone who claimed to be the victim of an $8 million pyramid scheme.
Regardless of whether the homeowner had engaged in earlier wrongdoing, pursuing retribution outside the justice system cannot be condoned, Auckland District Court judge David Sharp said this week as he sentenced both Jordan Galuva’a and Ketisemami Tuivai to prison.
“All we can do is use the legal process to try to recover things,” he said.
Court documents state the two large-statured men showed up at the $5-million home along with two other men and a 16-year-old around 11.30 on a Sunday night last October.
A university student was home alone, having fallen asleep in her bed during a call with her boyfriend. Her mother, the intended target, had not lived in the home since leaving New Zealand in 2018.
The young woman was awoken by the bang of the intruders smashing a back window to gain entry to the house.
“She informed her boyfriend that she believed someone was in the house,” the agreed summary of facts for Galuva’a and Tuivai states. “[She] got out of bed and opened her bedroom door to investigate.
“[She] saw the defendants walking up the stairs towards her. They were all fully clothed in black, wearing face coverings and gloves and carrying tools like hammers and crowbars.”
The woman put her hands up and said there was nothing of value in the house.
“Grab her and take her down,” she recalled one of the intruders saying as another man grabbed a fistful of her clothing and led her downstairs, instructing her to sit in a corner facing the wall as the group searched the home.
She was later brought outside, sitting on the ground as the five burglars stood around her, so that she could help open the remote-controlled gate to the property. Back inside the home, the intruders patted her down looking for a phone before noticing the device on her bed was still on an active call with her boyfriend.
They smashed the phone and an iPad with a hammer before one of the intruders dragged her to different rooms, ordering her to point out where valuables were stored.
“One of the defendants asked [her] if she had any money in her bank account,” court documents state. “She informed them that she had $2000 but was unable to transfer as they had smashed her phone.”
The intruders then told the woman about the beef with her mother, describing her as someone who had “scammed” $8 million.
“This is what she gets,” one of the men said, smashing a glass frame and removing an artwork.
“Let’s take her with us,” the victim recalled one of the men saying before she was ordered to take her clothes off.
She took off her pyjama top and was told to blindfold herself with it, but the men ran away and out the back of the property when police arrived at the front door around 1.11am.
Brothers Lauaki and Sione Fotu have also pleaded guilty to the aggravated burglary, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment. However, their sentencing has been postponed because they do not agree with everything in the summary of facts that Galuva’a and Tuivai admitted to.
The Fotu brothers deny having brought weapons or ever going into the upstairs area of the home, their lawyers told the judge this week.
All of the defendants were also initially charged with kidnapping, but that charge has since been withdrawn.
Sione Fotu earlier told police that he had been asked by Tuivai to assist with a job, according to court documents. An unknown associate of Tuivai had organised the break-in, suggesting they could retrieve about $2 million worth of items to help make up for the $8 million that had allegedly been defrauded from him, according to the agreed facts for the two who were sentenced this week.
But during the hour and 40 minutes they were at the property, the hired bandits only managed to collect about $10,000 worth of items. Of that, about $8700 worth had been damaged beyond repair, Judge Sharp noted.
The incident caused severe and ongoing anxiety for the victim, said Crown prosecutor Aoife Crumley, explaining that the young woman soon thereafter withdrew from her university courses and returned to China. The “sexual undertone” at the end of the ordeal would have added to her fear, Crumley said.
The prosecutor pointed out the offending involved “extreme intimidation” and premeditation, including all of the assailants dressing in black and wearing masks. She accepted, however, there was no actual violence involved in the burglary.
Defence lawyer Jolene Reddy, representing Galuva’a, emphasised that the defendants had been expecting the house to be empty. She acknowledged that her client, an out-of-work young father of three, was motivated by financial gain when presented with the opportunity.
“It’s something they didn’t understand was going to be so large in terms of the consequences today,” she said.
Emma Moss, representing Tuivai, agreed.
“This very dumb decision does not define all of their lives,” she said, pointing out that both defendants were assessed as having good prospects for rehabilitation and a low risk of re-offending.
Judge Sharp didn’t disagree with the defence submissions but said he couldn’t reach a non-custodial sentence given the gravity of the offence. It would have been a “terrifying experience” and “shouldn’t happen to anybody”, he said.
“She may of had a parent who was involved in doing something wrong,” but that’s not something that can or should be taken into account," the judge added. “It’s not something she did, and that’s not the way of dealing with problems ... She was entitled to feel safe and private in her own home.”
He ordered both men to serve sentences of two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment, after factoring in reductions for their guilty pleas, youth, remorse and other factors.
Homeowner Lam Yeung was described in court documents as having previously worked in sales and promotions in New Zealand for controversial Malaysia-based company MBI International Holdings, described in the summary of facts as an “investment pyramid scheme”.
Although she moved to Hong Kong seven years ago, she has been the subject of New Zealand-based civil lawsuits seeking compensation for lost investments.
“Since 2015, the ... defendants, who are members of the Chinese-speaking community in Auckland, have been encouraging people, mainly members of the same community, to invest large sums of money into an organisation or scheme called MFC Club/MBI International,” High Court at Auckland justice Neil Campbell summarised in a 2021 decision.
“They have done so by representing that MFC provided guaranteed high returns as the investment would multiply at least twice a year. It was represented that the investment was safe as MFC would pay cash if the investment was not able to be sold on the MFC market ...
“The plaintiffs invested substantial sums in MFC and have made significant losses. They say that MFC bears many hallmarks of a pyramid selling or Ponzi scheme prohibited under New Zealand law ... In July 2019 the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) issued a warning about MFC, referring to unsubstantiated and/or false and misleading claims.”
In the same judgment, Justice Campbell said he was “satisfied that the plaintiffs have a good arguable case”, but he declined to freeze the defendants’ New Zealand-based assets while the case was pending because he said there was no evidence of “dissipation” - shifting assets to avoid a payout should they lose the lawsuit.
The judge noted that one of the complainants told the court she had gone to police in 2019 and the matter had since been investigated by the Commerce Commission and the Serious Fraud Office. Some of the investors travelled to Malaysia in 2019 and were “partly successful” in recovering some of their losses, the judge noted.
In August 2023, Yeung was awarded $6800 in court costs after another High Court attempt to temporarily freeze her assets was unsuccessful.
“Our group has been fighting a long time for justice because of this Ponzi scheme,” one of the plaintiffs was quoted as saying. “We ask the court help us get justice.”
Justice Fitzgerald noted in another judgment issued last August: “The defendants deny that they were central to the promotion of the scheme in New Zealand and say that, like the plaintiffs (and those other investors in the scheme whom the plaintiffs represent), they too lost considerable sums of money from investing in the scheme.”
The summary of facts for the burglary notes that Tedy Teow, the founder of MBI International Holdings, became a fugitive in 2020 when Interpol issued a “red notice” indicating that China wanted him extradited there to face charges.
He was arrested in Thailand last year and extradited to China in August.
“Teow has been providing the Chinese with detailed information on how the MBI scam was executed and the people in Malaysia who were involved in laundering the money operation, and we [the police] are acting on it,” Malaysian Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told news agency CNA this month.
Police in Malaysia have recovered roughly $1.5 billion (in New Zealand dollars) in assets from the company, which went defunct after the “scam collapsed”, according to the official. But it is believed the company pilfered about $12.7 billion from Chinese investors alone, he said.
The Epsom property that was burgled in October has been given an estimated value by OneRoof of $5.07 million. It was once described, when on the market years ago, as a “majestic Epsom mansion” that had been “influenced by the grand homes of the southern states in America”.
It came with a pool, wine cellar and “dual security gates complete with four external security cameras“. The security cameras were working on the night of the burglary and footage was later used as evidence in the criminal prosecution.
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 US and New Zealand.
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Hato Hone St John sent an ambulance and two rapid response units to help.