Golriz Ghahraman has resigned after allegations of shoplifting. The Green MP said that her mental health had been “badly affected” by the stress of her work as an MP. Video / Supplied / NZ Herald
A leaked message thread containing a photo of ex-MP Golriz Ghahraman held a clue that later exposed the leaker’s identity.
Police have confirmed the detective leading the case spotted the clue and told Foodstuffs who the leaker was.
Foodstuffs fired the staff member.
The blogger who published the leaked message thread and photo told the Herald he was sent the image by a third party - not the guard.
“I was suppliedthe material from a third party and that’s all there is to it. [The third party is] a source, simple as that. I’ve never spoken to anyone from Foodstuffs,” he told the Herald.
The Herald received information through the Official Information Act showing Detective Senior Sergeant Ashley Matthews - the officer who investigated Ghahraman - figured out who the source of the photo was.
After studying a message thread and photo embedded on Spring’s blog, the detective emailed Foodstuffs to reveal the identity of the person who leaked the message.
The photograph included in the thread was of Ghahraman being questioned over her shopping by security staff while inside the Royal Oak Pak’n Save in Auckland.
The incident in October 2024 was then logged in the store’s security system and automatically batch-reported to police.
A police intelligence officer then identified it when seeking to match up repeat offenders with new information.
Detective Senior Sergeant Matthews - who handled Ghahraman’s shoplifting cases - was then alerted, and the Crown raised the incident with the High Court judge who was considering Ghahraman’s appeal over the sentence she received for the shoplifting incidents that had led to her exit from Parliament.
Months later, after the Herald reported the Pak’nSave incident, police decided to lay no charge. Doing so, they said, was not in the public interest.
The Pak’nSave supermarket at the centre of the shopping incident involving former MP Golriz Ghahraman. Composite photo / Michael Craig / Supplied
Spring had featured the Pak’nSave shopping incident on his blog in late January, embedding a message thread that included a photo of Ghahraman being questioned in the store.
The blog said at the time: “This site has obtained some security camera footage by a source (we have plenty more).”
That was followed by the message thread, in which the security guard - who had not been identified at that stage - said he couldn’t post “the full story” until “she’s been charged”.
Spring has told the Herald he was not one of the two parties messaging in the thread.
The thread included a thumbnail that had been blacked out before being posted. But whoever did it, failed to remove a clue that would prove vital.
Matthews, West Auckland’s most senior detective, emailed Foodstuffs on February 17 and said “the photo in question was originally taken by Pak’nSave contractor [name redacted] on the day of the genesis of these matters”.
“As you will be aware the photo appeared to leak out through a small blog site, of a blogger called [name redacted].”
Matthews sent the screenshots to Foodstuffs by email, pointing them to clues that revealed the identity of the security guard who was involved in the text conversation.
Matthews said: “You will see that the blogger has not redacted the Facebook messenger thumbnail and it therefore shows the left-hand portion of the profile photo of the user who has sent the image and the grey text.”
Matthews copied in a screenshot of a Facebook page and told Foodstuffs that the thumbnail on that was a match for the clues in the screenshot found on Spring’s blog.
Foodstuffs later confirmed the security guard had been sacked over the leaked photograph and staff were being trained on the handling of private information.
Spring said he was motivated to publish by Ghahraman’s prior shoplifting convictions. He said he received the message thread containing the photograph from someone else.
The OIA material released to the Herald also revealed text messages sent by the security guard to Matthews.
In the “A Halfling’s View” blog, former district court judge David Harvey raised the case of bouncer Jonathan Dixon who was convicted of dishonestly obtaining property after “accessing a computer system for a dishonest purpose” when he copied CCTV footage of England rugby star and Royals-connected Mike Tindall partying in Queenstown.
A police spokesperson said there were differences between the case of the Pak’nSave security guard and the Dixon case. “In this case, a digital photograph was sent to a third party.
“This image was captured by the security guard on his own phone. As such, this would not constitute the offence of unlawful access to a computer system dishonestly or without claim of right. There is also no evidence of any derived benefit as a result.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
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