Karina Charmaine Knedler was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court at the end of March.
Karina Knedler applied for passports in other people’s names, used her employers’ details and marriage certificate to apply for loans, and submitted false GST claims.
She continued to claim Working For Families tax credits, despite her children not living with her, applied for a loan using a car as security, while that car was still sitting in a car yard, and while employed at a retail store, processed false refunds and pocketed the cash.
Over the past two years, her dishonesty charges kept coming, and when she came before a judge at an earlier hearing, he commented, “if she told me it was daytime, I’d have to go outside and check”.
Now the 39-year-old, who uses aliases that include Karina Longville and Karina Hollows, has been sentenced on dishonesty matters dating back to 2023.
At her recent sentencing in the Tauranga District Court, the Crown asked Judge David Cameron to take Knedler’s self-reported addiction and background issues, traversed in a pre-sentence report, with a “significant degree of caution”.
Knedler had told a pre-sentence report writer that a friend had taken her own life, following a traumatic court case that Knedler was a complainant in.
However, the Crown’s inquiries found the case Knedler was referring to, and was a complainant in, had involved a less serious charge than the one claimed, and there had been no co-complainant.
The person she claimed had committed suicide was, in fact, “alive and well”.
Crown prosecutor Laura Clay said there were examples of Knedler misleading the court on other occasions, too.
“She’s told Judge Geoghegan she needed to leave the court for a family court matter that afternoon, which was not scheduled,” Clay said.
“She’s also told Judge Geoghegan she needed to immediately leave the court to attend her chemotherapy appointments.”
However, Clay said the alcohol and drug report said she had good health.
“There is no suggestion that she is suffering from a cancer diagnosis,” Clay said.
She said any issues raised in the alcohol and drug pre-sentence report should be given limited weight, in terms of a causal nexus.
“It does not suggest that the defendant is incapable of engagement or planning... The scale and persistence and sophistication of the offending demonstrates an ability for the defendant to organise herself, sustain focus and execute quite complex conduct over quite a significant period of time.”
Knedler’s lawyer Bill Nabney pointed out there were things contained in the pre-sentence report which the Crown hadn’t taken issue with, despite making inquiries about them, which were not false claims.
While employed in a retail store, Knedler processed false refunds, for items including a jewellery box, a silk jacket, and two other garments, when she was alone in the shop.
But the items had not been returned; Knedler took relevant receipts out of the till, processed the refunds, and pocketed the cash.
She took nearly $600 in false refunds.
While working at K&M Electrical in Tauranga, she applied for loans in the names of the business owners, accessing copies of their marriage certificate and drivers licences and using them to apply for loans.
She used the finance to purchase a 2016 Jeep Wrangler and 2017 Dodge Challenger.
In her communications about obtaining finance and purchasing the vehicles, she purported to be the director of the company, using the company email address and signing off in the director’s name.
She also created Afterpay and Laybuy accounts using the director’s name and business email address, and used the Laybuy account to purchase items at Briscoes.
For each set of charges Knedler faced, from different agencies, she had a different name associated with her offending.
Her IRD charges were laid under the name “Karina Longville” and involved her accessing a computer system to get Working for Families Tax Credits (FAM), tax evasion, dishonestly using documents and using forged documents.
From December 2020, she had been getting Working for Families tax credits for sharing the daily care of her four children, but in May 2021, the self-employed “health and fitness trainer” started receiving self-employed income which she didn’t declare for a three-year period.
Later, her children were no longer living with her, but she didn’t tell the IRD, and continued to get the tax credits.
Along with her self-employed income, between 2022 and 2024 Longville received income through three different businesses but didn’t declare any of it for income tax purposes.
She set up a company called “Kaizen 1991 Limited” in 2023 and listed someone else’s name as its director.
The bank account used when Kaizen registered with Inland Revenue was changed about a month later to a joint account, with her as one of the account holders.
She made several attempts to get money in GST returns but these were declined by the IRD after the information requested was not provided.
She would make GST claims with false invoices, including one for a $65,000 vehicle, and some account statements, but Kaizen never traded and didn’t provide or receive any services.
She also set up “The Strand Cafe and Bar 2024 Ltd”, using one of her aliases, and it went into receivership three months later.
She registered the business for GST and, a couple of weeks later, registered it as an employer. The bank account provided was her personal account.
Several times in 2024, she filed GST returns and filed false documents to support them.
Again, she claimed GST for several vehicles - including a Nissan X-Trail which she had acquired using fraudulent means: She used her former employer’s details to apply for finance, got a loan, and bought the vehicle, which was later repossessed.
She also made a GST claim for a Ford Ranger, which was later found to be in a car yard and had never been purchased by Knedler.
She had, however, used it as security for another loan, despite having never purchased it. The security placed against the car was only discovered when the car yard had a legitimate buyer approach to buy the vehicle.
Knedler’s house was searched in August 2024 and three bundles of sales records for the café were found.
They showed around $20,000 worth of cash sales that were not declared for tax. She also did not declare or pay tax deductions made from employees’ pay.
Over three-and-a-half years, Knedler attempted to obtain $45,901.95 in GST, related to Kaizen; and $49,078.13 in GST, related to The Strand Cafe.
She received $20,130.81 in FAM credits; and failed to declare about $72,439 in self-employed and business income between 2022 and 2024.
The two Department of Internal Affairs charges were laid under another of Knedler’s aliases, Karina Hollows.
These charges related to Knedler making two false passport applications, using other women’s names.
She used RealME accounts to make the applications, using the same email address for both, and with the same cellphone number associated.
The security question related to the middle name of one of Knedler’s children.
One of the women who had her maiden name used for the application, when interviewed by a Department of Internal Affairs investigator, “immediately” nominated Hollows as a suspect, and confirmed it was her in the photo attached to the application.
When Knedler was first called by an investigator, on the phone number she’d provided for the false applications, she confirmed she had made an application, and that she needed to travel to see a “father figure” who was dying in Australia.
Judge Cameron gave an earlier sentence indication with a starting point of two years imprisonment on the Crown charges, 18 months imprisonment on the IRD charges, and 12 months imprisonment on the Department of Internal Affairs charges, with a three-month uplift for the police charge of theft by a person in a special relationship.
He gave a 20% discount for her guilty plea, and 10% for her background matters, which included her addiction issues.
He noted Knedler had offered to pay $8000 in reparation, which she expected to receive in an upcoming relationship property settlement.
But the judge said while this offer was to her credit, it didn’t justify a further discount.
“The losses she has caused are truly enormous, and she simply will not be in the position to make any substantial repayment... $8,000 could almost be described as trivial in respect of the overall losses she has caused to others by her calculating, deceitful, fraudulent behaviour.”
He ordered the $8000 reparation be paid, however, and sentenced her to three years’, five months’ and 21 days’ imprisonment.
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.