Crusader guilty of scam

The public face of an anti-P campaign has been found guilty for her part in a scam in which more than $500,000 in cheques was stolen from mail boxes.

Anti-P crusader Elaine Ngamu - who also works for Hoani Waititi marae, whose members include Maori Affairs Minister Dr Pita Sharples - faces up to seven years in prison on each convicted count.

Ngamu, who hit headlines in 2005 and 2006 with her anti-P crusade and a march on Parliament, was also jailed in 1998 for stealing from post boxes.

In the latest case Ngamu, her two sisters Karen Rowena Ngamu and Georgina Rosemary Ryder, and associate Jack Faamoana Rasmussen were each found guilty in Auckland District Court on 39 counts of dishonestly and without claim of right using a document.

Ronald Kerehama Richards was found guilty on 27 counts and Donna Mia Teariki Paul on 22.

Each charge faces a maximum penalty of seven years' imprisonment.

As well as her work at the marae, Ngamu is also a whanau liaison case manager at Serenity, a drug rehabilitation clinic in West Auckland.

In the five-week trial, the Crown said members of the "joint enterprise" organised someone to steal mail sacks from public mail boxes on Paul Matthews Rd in Albany.

Another member of the syndicate would then remove the cheques and alter them before depositing them into accounts of people they had recruited.

These altered cheques would be deposited into various banks' drop-off boxes - designed to stop customers queuing when banking cheques.

Other people were tasked with withdrawing the funds.

The offending occurred between March 2005 and June 2006, mainly on the North Shore, where the Ngamu family is based.

The biggest amount of money stolen in one hit was $205,579.57 from a tile warehouse company. They also took money from family trusts, and painting, travel insurance, food, flooring and marine businesses. Police were alerted by banks and started an investigation.

In April 1998, Ngamu, then a 39-year-old mother of five, was sentenced to 3 years' jail for fraud.

She was one of 86 people arrested for being part of an organised crime ring breaking into post office boxes, stealing bank account details, then withdrawing the money and depositing it into associates' accounts. The scam netted about $1.3 million.

At the time, Ngamu was described as the mastermind behind the operation, despite her lawyer saying she had changed her ways and embarked on university studies.

Judge Graham Hubble said at her sentencing in 1998: "Mrs Ngamu has convinced herself that a criminal mind is clever. Was Elaine Ngamu the godmother or overseer? I believe she must accept that responsibility."

The Auckland grandmother made national headlines again in 2005 for her staunch anti-P crusade.

After witnessing nine relatives become P addicts she started Te Roopu o Ahi Kaa, an organisation giving education and support to addicts and families.

The police donated a laptop for the trust's P presentations and Inland Revenue gave Ngamu three computers. She also featured heavily in a February 2006 anti-P march from Auckland to Wellington.