Ex-beauty queen jailed over sham marriage

A Rotorua woman charged $15,000 for a

A former teenage beauty queen has been jailed for a year on a raft of offences, including a "sham" marriage to a Chinese man.

Sentencing Hinetekawa Ezrah Sayers, 20, in Rotorua District Court this afternoon, Judge Chris McGuire said it was only her age that kept her from spending longer behind bars.

He also noted that one of her offences, an assault on another woman, had been committed within hours of leaving the courtroom in August last year.

At that appearance he had given her jail warnings on six charges and he said Sayers had repeatedly offended while on bail

Sayers, who was crowned Miss Teen Diamond at a Rotorua beauty pageant in 2006, pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a marriage certificate in her name and that of Huailong Yan on July 14 last year and producing the certificate to the Immigration Department knowing it was misleading.

She also admitted theft, burglary and receiving charges, plus one of driving while disqualified.

A charge of assaulting a child has been denied.

Judge McGuire sentenced her to a year's imprisonment on the theft-related charges with an additional three months for the immigration matters to be served concurrently.

He also ordered her to pay $1000 reparation as a token to one uninsured family who had been among her victims.

The court heard they had lost $5000 worth or property in a burglary Sayers was involved in.

She was also disqualified from driving for a year from June 1.

Referring to the "marriage of convenience" charges, Judge McGuire said Sayers' agreed to marry Yan last year in return for $15,000 to be received by time-payment.

The marriage had been to allow Yan to obtain a work permit and New Zealand residency. At the time she was living with another man.

Following the Rotorua registry office wedding she took the marriage certificate to immigration officials in Hamilton and presented a letter from her mother outlining her support for the "marriage".

"You spoke about being very much in love with him [Yan]," Judge McGuire said.

It was the man she was living with who masterminded a string of burglaries and thefts in Rotorua and Taupo, involving "high end" electronic goods.

Police pinpointed Sayers' involvement while intercepting dozens of text messages in which she attempted to broker deals for the goods within the first hour of many of them being stolen.

The two assault charges Sayers faced both involved beating up other women. The second assault had been in a supermarket car park where Sayers, angry that another vehicle had been inconveniently parked, knocked her victim to the ground, punched her with her closed fist, held her head down and, when she got up, pushed her in the throat so hard the woman stopped breathing.

Judge McGuire read from a letter Sayers had written to a judge shortly before that attack. In it she said she realised it was time she grew up, put criminal actions behind her and was really scared about spending time in custody.

"You were plainly telling lies when you wrote this letter," he said.

He told Sayers her offending was not a template for a talented young woman of 20.

"It is a template of a person who has embarked on a career as a career criminal...you know what buttons to push, what levers to pull to get where you want to go."

Sayers' counsel, Martin Hine, submitted she was a young woman with a supportive family who had been under the influence of an older man.

Throughout her time in the dock Sayers hung her head and attempted to cover it while being photographed. She called out to her mother as she was led to the cells. In turn, her mother abused the justice system as she left the courtroom.

- NZPA