Grandmother jailed for $206,000 ACC fraud

A New Plymouth grandmother was jailed today for two years and three months for defrauding the Accident Compensation Corporation of $206,000 over a 10-year period.

Her husband and other upset family members watched from the back of Tauranga District Court as Rosina Mary Healey, also known as Rosina Williams, aged 63, was led from the dock.

She pleaded guilty last month to 44 charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage, which carries a maximum jail term of seven years.

It was Healey's second such offence. She was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment in 2003 for cheating Work and Income. With her husband Brian Healey - who got 15 months behind bars - she was convicted of falsely claiming welfare payments of more than $200,000.

Judge Christopher Harding told Healey when she appeared for sentencing today that her offending was planned, repetitive, premeditated, deliberate and "relatively sophisticated," extending over a decade.

After being injured in an accident in February 1990, Healey had applied to ACC for cover. From July that year until May 2003, she routinely submitted medical certificates stating that she was unfit for work.

However, over the years she worked for "significant" periods as an enrolled nurse in rest homes, first in Thames and then Taranaki, without advising the corporation.

Judge Harding said medical certificates were regularly claimed from her general practitioner, even after he moved to Waipu near Whangarei.

"You were in New Plymouth and you travelled repeatedly (to Northland)."

She obtained 44 certificates from the GP, while holding down jobs for up to a year at a time, the judge said.

"The claims to ACC were patently false."

Healey had three separate Inland Revenue Department numbers and was employed under six different names, he said.

All the while she was paid weekly by ACC to a total of more than $206,000.

There was no way her guilty plea could attract "anything like the maximum discount". The plea change came late and only after a trial date had been allocated. By then evidence had been mounting up against her, Judge Harding said.

Although Healey had repaid more than $70,000 to Winz after her earlier conviction, there was "no conceivable way" she could recompense ACC, the judge said.

"Recognising the extreme unlikelihood that reparation will ever be paid, you are none the less ordered to pay $206,000 at $20 a week."

Crown prosecutor Larry Meredith opposed home detention. Despite her health problems, Healey would be well catered for serving a custodial sentence, he said, also commenting that she was "well versed" in deceiving even the medical profession.

Her lawyer, Julian Hannam of New Plymouth, said Healey's risk of reoffending was not high, given her age, health and "the pain of this prosecution - and the Winz one as well - to her, her family and the whole community".

Outside the court, daughter Natalene Fitzgerald was in tears.

Ms Fitzgerald said she was not condoning what her mother, a grandmother of seven, had done.

"But she is an amazing woman and she has had a hard, hard life."

- NZPA