Imprisoned mum of five Ariana Thompson-Bell fights for home detention

Pregnant mum of five, Ariana Thompson-Bell, spent nearly $500,000 on takeaways, at cafes and supermarkets, and a trip through Air NZ. Photo / 123RF

A pregnant Waikato mother of five, jailed after siphoning nearly $500,000 out of her employer’s bank account over two years, is fighting her sentence.

Ariana Thompson-Bell, 33, spent most of her ill-gotten gains on takeaways, cafes, at the supermarket, and a holiday.

In sentencing her in July, Judge Tini Clark deemed her offending was driven by “greed”.

“This was not money taken for something essential, where it was a one-off occasion out of desperation or anything of the kind.

“This was a very warped sense of entitlement to money that she knew ... she was not entitled to.”

After taking a starting point of five years’ jail and issuing discounts totalling 55%, she then jailed Thompson-Bell for 27 months.

This week her lawyer Christine Hardy was in the High Court at Hamilton appealing that sentence on three grounds.

She said the starting point was too high, there was insufficient credit for previous good character (5% should have been 10%), and credit for remorse and restorative justice was 5%, but should have been 10%.

But Crown prosecutor Raewyn Greenhalgh said the starting point was within the normal range, and the discounts were adequate given her high breach of trust and impact on the organisation that had to seek name suppression to protect its credibility.

‘It was driven by greed’

Between 2021 and 2023, Thompson-Bell began siphoning money out of the trust’s account.

Instead of paying legitimate invoices to service providers, she put the money into one of four accounts she had control of, including one belonging to her young daughter.

In 2023, the chief executive started receiving letters from the IRD and other companies stating that payments had been missed.

A forensic accountant investigated and discovered one of the accounts belonged to a staff member, identified as Thompson-Bell.

In total, $499,972.55 was stolen.

Since first appearing in court last year, a total of $66,355.93 has been repaid, which included about $40,000 from her mother.

At sentencing, and trying to describe the impetus behind her offending, Judge Clark said one word came to mind, “greed”.

‘She should have been sentenced to home detention’

Hardy submitted that this was a case where home detention should have been reached.

She explained that as soon as the offending was discovered, she engaged in a hui, effectively a restorative justice conference, where the trust asked her to start paying the money back.

Together with a $40,000 payment from her mother, $66,355.93 was repaid.

She said a starting point of between four years and six months or eight months would have been more appropriate.

Also, her offending wasn’t sophisticated; “it was simply changing bank account numbers”.

Thompson-Bell was a mother of five and is currently pregnant in prison with her sixth child.

Justice Andrew Becroft asked about her husband, and Hardy said he had to resign from his Department of Conservation job to become a fulltime caregiver to their five children.

He said it was an interesting case, as the judge had allowed 55% in discounts, which wouldn’t happen now given the legislative change capping discounts at 40%.

“It’s a two-year period. It’s not just a one-off ... I think it’s a lot of money, half a million dollars.”

But there was one key aspect where Justice Becroft appeared to offer a glimmer of hope for further discount - insufficient credit for previous good character.

She said Judge Clark had refused to acknowledge it and instead treated it as a neutral factor with the absence of an aggravating feature.

“However, the Court of Appeal has previously found that approach is an error ... that a defendant without any previous convictions ... or first [offender] should receive recognition of that fact,” Hardy said.

Justice Becroft soon after questioned it himself.

“I’m just not satisfied, on the face of it, that that is a proper analysis,” he told Greenhalgh when discussing the same issue.

But she submitted that the judge had already incorporated that aspect when issuing her 5%.

Justice Becroft said it was easy for him to “pick apart” another judge’s sentence carried out likely on a busy court list day.

“But if there’s an error, that’s probably one that’s explicit on its face,” he said.

After a few mathematical equations, it was deemed that if the starting point stayed the same but an additional 5% credit was given, it would get Thompson-Bell down to 24 months jail, and make her eligible for home detention.

Justice Becroft reserved his decision.

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.