Waikato woman set up fake profiles to defraud 23 people on Facebook marketplace

Ngāruawāhia woman Lynette Crawford's Facebook scams totalled around $10,000 and involved almost 30 victims. Photo / Tania Whyte

A woman set up fake Facebook profiles to defraud more than 20 people of thousands of dollars by offering items for sale but handing nothing over.

But it’s not just on social media where Lynette Kim Crawford ripped people off. She also frequented several retail outlets and put power tools - and two pork roasts - in her handbag before walking out the front door without paying, sometimes even returning immediately afterwards for more.

The 55-year-old had already been trespassed from Briscoes, so when she strolled into their Te Rapa and Hamilton central stores and stole a stick vacuum and, a couple of months later, put a $140 duvet in her handbag, she was charged with burglary, instead of the normal shoplifting charge.

Crawford, of Ngāruawāhia, appeared for sentencing in the Hamilton District Court yesterday on multiple charges, including theft, burglary, obtaining by deception, and a representative charge of accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes.

Judge Brett Crowley had earlier indicated a home detention sentence. However, Crawford’s lawyer Grace Aislabie pointed out she had been on electronically monitored bail since December last year without any issues.

Aislabie went on to successfully argue for a combined sentence of community detention and intensive supervision.

Crawford’s marketplace offending was not sophisticated, she said, but it did span 12 months.

Between August 12, 2021 and August 18, 2022, she created fake Facebook profiles and then used them to list tools for sale.

Victims would agree to a sale price and deposit the money in her bank account, but she would not send them, and instead blocked them.

Twenty-three people fell victim to her scam. However, the obtaining by deception charge related to another marketplace “transaction” in which she sold Milwaukee power tools and batteries for $500.

She got in touch with the victim again to say she also had an impact driver and hammer drill with two 5.0 batteries and a charger in a hard case.

He agreed to buy that for $250 - but the victim never saw the tools and remained $750 out of pocket.

As for her thefts, Crawford crammed two Dewalt drills and slug pellets into her leather handbag after walking around Mitre 10 Cambridge on September 9, last year. She did the same at the company’s sister store in Morrinsville a week later, that time stealing an angle grinder, before taking the $104 pork roasts from Countdown St James on October 11.

At Bunnings in Takanini a few months earlier, she put items in her shopping basket before using the women’s bathroom to transfer them into her handbag and then left the store.

She also stole a dress and perfume from Farmers Te Rapa in May 2022.

‘Appalling dishonesty history’

Judge Crowley said there were 23 victims from Crawford’s marketplace frauds and the offending totalled about $10,000.

Aislabie didn’t think a reparation order would be realistic as Crawford wasn’t working. However, the judge was insistent.

He chose six victims, totalling $2000, and apologised to those who would miss out.

Aislabie said her client would only be able to pay back $20 a week.

Paying back the full amount of $10,000 at $20 a week would take about 10 years and likely only revictimise those affected, the judge said.

In handing down the sentence, Judge Crowley said Crawford had an “appalling history of dishonesty offending”, but took into account her time on bail and her gambling addiction issues.

“This has been a long and engrained pattern of behaviour, but hopefully you are to now put it behind you,” he said.

Crawford was sentenced to six months’ community detention, 12 months’ intensive supervision and ordered to pay the $2000 reparation, split among six of the victims.

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for eight years and been a journalist for 19.