Evidence begins in Allsorts fraud hearing

A couple who lost their home in an alleged scam have become the first witnesses to give evidence in one of the country's biggest property fraud cases.

Facing the mortgagee sale of their home with debts they could not pay, Rubina and John Pine turned to a group of lawyers and mortgage brokers they thought could help.

A depositions hearing in Hamilton heard the Hawera couple lost their home following an alleged fraudulent sales and purchase agreement.

The couple are among 73 witnesses due to give evidence at the hearing, set down for nine weeks.

Twenty-one people - lawyers, accountants and managers among them - face 337 fraud-related charges totalling more than $10 million following a police probe, known as Operation Allsorts.

The group is alleged to have been led by Miles John McKelvy, a 47-year-old Hamilton man facing 112 fraud related charges.

Thirteen of the accused have already conceded prima facie cases and have been committed for trial, while seven are contesting the Crown's evidence at the hearing.

Wayne Gilbert Sealey, a 52-year-old farm manager from Oamaru, has pleaded guilty to taking part in an organised criminal group and will be sentenced in June.

A second man, Leslie Ronald Orchard, 45, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison on fraud charges relating to the case.

Orchard is serving six years and nine months for 686 convictions for dishonesty offences totalling nearly $1.5 million.

He is the Crown's star witness in the case, where police allege the group targeted individuals in financial difficulty who were unable to raise funds from first-tier lenders such as trading banks.

Members of the group posing as mortgage brokers would allegedly trick people into sale and purchase agreements for their homes.

Funds were raised but police allege they never went to anyone other than the group members.

Mrs Pine told community magistrates Rae Brooker and Pat Ferguson yesterday that she and her husband were in a desperate situation and turned to McKelvy.

She said Steven Clifford Buckland, 29, of Hawera, was sent as a mortgage broker to talk to the Pines. He set up a meeting between the couple and a Cambridge man who also faces charges but has name suppression.

Mrs Pine said she signed a sale and purchase agreement for her home at the kitchen bench of Buckland's home soon after.

At the Cambridge meeting, she said she was offered independent legal advice from a lawyer suggested by Buckland, McKelvy and others.

He was Stuart David Jecks, 49, who faces 10 charges in relation to the case.

"I just didn't understand exactly. We were desperate at that time - we wanted to save our home. Unfortunately that didn't happen," she told Buckland's lawyer Andrew Laurenson.

"It was just so quickly done. From the time I met Steven to the time the house was to be mortgagee saled was two-and-a-half weeks."

Mrs Pine said McKelvy got Buckland to set up a family trust for their home but she knew Buckland was not a lawyer and now knew a trust deed needed to be drawn up by a lawyer.

She became suspicious of the deal when she paid over $400 as the first repayment under the deal and was shown the money had gone into a TAB account.

Mrs Pine said Buckland then suggested she go and see her own lawyer or his.

She conceded she had heard McKelvy had allegedly swindled Buckland and his family as well.

Stephen Buckland conceded a prima facie case at the end of the evidence yesterday and was remanded to appear in the High Court at Hamilton on July 7.

The hearing will proceed, with 71 more witnesses to give evidence.