Two men agreed to pay $200 and $280 to spend time with an escort, but lost thousands of dollars from their accounts.
A woman working as an escort used a ruse to gain access to clients’ phones, then transferred thousands of dollars out of their bank accounts.
Anahera Marino is now in prison after two such offences – one in which she took $2500 and another when $10,000 was transferred into her account.
But before she was sent to prison, Marino had pushed for home detention, indicating she wanted to continue her escort work so she could pay her victims’ reparation.
However, a district court judge ruled out the non-custodial sentence, noting that when previously on home detention, Marino cut off her ankle bracelet and absconded for 10 months.
A High Court judge has now denied her appeal against her 16-and-a-half-month prison term, saying “Ms Marino’s risk of reoffending currently remains unacceptably high if she was not in custody”.
Marino has a criminal history dating back to 2013, including dishonesty, violence, drug offences and many breaches of court sentences.
A probation officer’s report said she tends “to live by her own rules without consideration of long-term consequences”.
It also said Marino has an “inflated sense of self-worth” with limited self-regulation and a propensity for violence.
Her lawyers have said she has a “complex” personal history and had to navigate a difficult upbringing.
In July 2024, Marino was working as an escort at Mount Maunganui.
A client agreed to pay her $280, and gave Marino his phone so she could enter her bank account details.
The transfer was made, but Marino took the chance to move another $2500 out of the client’s account.
In August 2025, another client booked her services for an agreed fee of $200.
After he arrived at her house, she sat him down and went through the same process as she had with the previous client.
She got him to pay by bank transfer but while she had access to his phone, she moved $10,000 into her own account.
While police were investigating this incident the following day, they searched Marino’s property and found half a gram of methamphetamine and a pipe for smoking it.
They also recovered $3500 in $50 notes.
Marino was charged and pleaded guilty to obtaining and causing loss by deception, theft, possession of a Class A drug, and possession of a drug utensil.
The charges also covered a theft in Christchurch, when Marino drove away from a business without paying after having two new tyres fitted to her car.
She never paid the $952 she owed, despite being given a number of chances to do so.
After being charged, Marino completed a restorative justice process with her victims, but said she intended to earn the money to pay reparation by continuing her escort work.
The probation officer said this indicated her limited insight into consequences, and highlighted her risk of reoffending.
In sending Marino to prison, District Court Judge Tony Grieg noted Marino had 11 convictions for breaching community-based sentences, including repeated home detention breaches in 2022, and a breach of electronically-monitored bail the same year.
While on a home detention sentence in 2018, Marino cut off her tracker and absconded, remaining at large for 10 months.
Despite this, Marino appealed to the High Court against her jail term and the judge’s refusal to commute it to another home detention sentence.
She said the judge erred in deciding that the principles of denunciation and deterrence could not be met by home detention, gave too much weight to her previous poor compliance on bail and sentences, and was wrong to find the proposed home detention address unsuitable.
The police supported the judge’s decision, citing Marino’s history of offending and non-compliance with previous sentences.
High Court Justice Karen Grau dismissed Marino’s appeal against her jail term, noting her reoffending risk remained “unacceptably high”.
“I can find no error in the decision that a sentence of imprisonment was the least restrictive sentence appropriate in all the circumstances,” Justice Grau said.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.