For 13 years, Jaclyn Henare was a trusted presence at the family-run Auckland construction industry company where she worked - so much so that when an audit turned up financial irregularities, she was tasked with getting to the bottom of it.
But that investigation was never going to succeed, for reasons that would later become apparent.
It wasn’t until the company owners turned to a longtime friend, former high-ranking police detective turned private investigator Richard Middleton, that Henare confessed.
She had stolen more than $375,000 since 2017 - the furthest back the company’s readily available financial records went. In reality, Middleton said in a recent interview with the Herald, he and the company’s owners believe the thefts dated back well beyond that.
“When she was first employed, she lied to them,” he explained. “She said she had some court fines for a car crash. It turned out she was paying court fines for a previous theft as a servant charge.”
Middleton, who often consults with businesses via his director role at Veritas Investigations, always urges companies to run a relatively inexpensive criminal background check for all new employees. Henare’s thefts are a worst-case example of what can happen otherwise.
“They didn’t [but] they now do a criminal history check on everyone employed,” he said. “In a way, it’s sad. But if they’d done one on her they’d never have hired her.”
The 48-year-old defendant was sentenced last year to two years and five months’ imprisonment.
“The magnitude is significant,” Judge Robyn von Keisenberg said as both Henare and the business owners turned up to the Auckland District Court for the hearing.
“The trust that they placed in you has been sorely misplaced.”
Court documents state Henare was hired in 2011 and worked initially as an administrator and customer services clerk before she was later handed more trusted roles.
The company has been granted name suppression, fearing the swindle could create even more havoc by causing clients to lose confidence. But the owners allowed Middleton to discuss the investigation with the Herald.
This is the first time the brazen, long-term theft has been reported in the media.
The company began using new Eftpos software in 2017. It came with a card allowing the company to provide refunds when necessary.
“The defendant regularly swiped the refund card through the company’s Eftpos machine to claim a refund under the transactional limit of $500 into her personal accounts,” the agreed summary of facts for her case states. “If the defendant wanted to withdraw more than $500, she would make multiple refunds kept under the $500 limit.”
In total, authorities counted just over 800 withdrawals in which the money went into one of her three bank accounts.
In retrospect, it perhaps was obvious. But her co-workers gave her the benefit of the doubt.
“I now understand why parcels were arriving multiple times a week with personal shopping items for her,” another staff member noted in a victim impact statement. “All the things she regularly bought online, sometimes I found myself thinking, ‘Wow, wish I could shop/afford this much!’”
Footwear was among the parcels regularly sent to the office, as were gifts for her grandson. In fact, the staff member noted, new shoes were among the personal belongings Henare took with her when she was escorted from the business on the last day of her employment.
With all the parcels coming in, work seemed to be a genuinely happy place for Henare prior to her scheme unravelling, the former co-worker explained.
“I never thought for a second she was using someone else’s money illegally for it,” she said.
The company owners gave Middleton a call about a year ago.
“We think we’ve discovered a fraudster in our staff,” he recalled the longtime acquaintances saying.
Middleton had spent 20 years investigating homicides and serious crime in South Auckland before taking on a management role in which he oversaw hundreds of New Zealand Police employees.
He retired in 2014 after 33 years of policing, but after a year of decompressing - and driving his wife crazy at home - it was strongly suggested he consider a second career, he recently explained with a laugh. Detective work, in which he no longer had to manage staff or be the one taking orders, seemed the perfect compromise.
After the call, he met with the owners off-site and they took him through what they had already discovered. Were their suspicions valid, they wondered?
“Yeah, no question,” he told them after they showed him documents showing that auditors couldn’t account for about $300,000. “There will be more.”
Obtaining records prior to 2017 would have been prohibitively expensive, so they focused on what they already had.
“I estimate it was ... $500 a day, every day that she came to work,” he said. “As soon as the records were there, she was starting. How we know it was every day is, whenever she was on leave it didn’t happen.”
But that’s not entirely true, he backtracked.
“Because when she was on leave, she’d ring staff members and say, ‘Oh, I meant to but I forgot about it, get a refund for this. Can you pay it into that account?’
“... They felt betrayed - absolutely betrayed.”
The owner called Henare to a meeting and invited Middleton along, letting him introduce himself and do the talking once she arrived.
“As soon as she realised the game was up, she looked at the business owner and said, ‘I’m so sorry,’” he said. “She wanted to explain what had gone on to the business owners, but at that point we had a game plan that they’d stay out of it just to keep that independence.”
A two-hour interview followed in which she signed a statement explaining how it happened. She was then escorted off the premises.
“She claimed that she realised it was wrong, didn’t want to do it any more, and that’s why she stopped,” Middleton recalled of the meeting. “That’s just bullocks. She lied.”
In reality, he said, it stopped only because she had lost the refund card - later found in the pocket of a reflective vest - while on a site visit.
Henare also claimed she got addicted to online gambling during the Covid-19 lockdown, but Middleton said he never saw any evidence of it. The problem with that excuse, he said, was that the thefts started well before the pandemic.
After that meeting, the company has the option of parting ways with Middleton and thanking him for his service or continuing to pay him to put together a comprehensive file to present to police. They chose the latter option, knowing it would expedite the justice process.
“They [police] do a really good job but it just takes time,” Middleton said, explaining that financial crime investigations often get put on the back burner when there’s an influx of violent crime.
A meeting was arranged with the police financial crimes unit in December 2024 and Henare was arrested a month later.
Henare faced up to seven years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to the representative charge of theft by a person in a special relationship.
Judge von Keisenberg rejected the defence request for a sentence starting point of two and a half years, which could have potentially resulted in a non-custodial sentence once mitigating factor reductions were factored in. She instead ordered a three-and-a-half-year starting point, which she described as “if anything, at the lower end”.
“In this case, and I am sure you are under no misapprehension, this is very serious offending,” the judge told Henare.
She described the 806 total fraudulent transactions as “extraordinarily high” and “a seriously aggravating factor” - along with the high dollar amount and the fact it was “calculated theft, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year”.
“It is a smallish company, so the impact of that offending resonates,” he said, referring to a victim impact statement on behalf of the company authored by one of its directors.
“... Henare’s frauds dented our confidence in that we doubted ourselves as business partners,” the statement read. “Her actions also dented our trust and confidence in our employees, although we tried consciously to not let this happen.”
The financial discrepancies were first discovered when the company sold part of its shares to a new owner. The missing funds meant they had to accept a lower share price, they explained.
Judge von Keisenberg allowed 35% in total reductions for Henare’s guilty plea, rehabilitation efforts and her letter of remorse.
“In your case, there has been no attempt at reparation and you have been candid and frank with the probation officer that you are simply not in a position to repay anything by way of reparation,” she added. “Clearly, that cannot reflect in a discount.”
What made things “considerably worse”, the judge said, was the fact Henare was “not a stranger to dishonesty”.
She was convicted in 1997 of theft as a servant and again in 2010 of theft by a person in a special relationship. For the latter case, she was ordered to serve home detention and pay $60,000 reparation.
“Although these matters are relatively historic, they are directly related and what that also tells me, Ms Henare, is that you did not learn,” Judge von Keisenberg said, ordering an uplift of three months.
She also imposed a reparation order for $376,606, despite Henare’s indication she wouldn’t be able to repay it.
Up until the day of sentencing, the owners still hadn’t known about Henare’s criminal history, Middleton recently said.
“Do due diligence. Do the police history check,” he repeated.
“It costs $50, you can do it online, and it’s just part of hiring nowadays. I tell people, ‘Just get it done. You might think absolutely no problem [with a candidate], but get it done.’”
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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