Tinder swindler’s jail term increased after sentencing on remaining charges

Tyler Tetera has been sentenced on remaining charges. Photo / Dean Purcell

A father-of-two duped into a sex-money scam at the hands of a “bored” yet “skilled” Tinder conman says the deception made him feel like a failure.

The man thought he was chatting to an alluring blonde policewoman called Tori on the dating app in 2021. But he was actually talking to a 23-year-old Whakatāne man called Tyler Tetera.

“Tori was a profile you made up,” Judge Simon Lance told Tetera before sentencing him at the Auckland District Court on Wednesday.

The victim, whose identity is permanently suppressed, told the court it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

He was traumatised when he had to give evidence in court and had trouble sleeping despite going to therapy, he wrote in a victim impact statement.

“No matter what happens, nothing will ever make up for it,” he said.

Using photos stolen from an ex-policewoman’s social media account, Tetera created Tori on Tinder and befriended the security guard, promising to help him get his dream job in the police force.

The man never met Tori, but would be convinced by the fake Tinder persona to meet her “boss”, Tetera, and ultimately have sex with him for nearly three months in early 2021.

In those months, Tetera also duped him of $15,000 - borrowed money the man now has to repay.

“This has made him feel like a failure as a person and as a dad,” Judge Lance said, reading from his statement.

Crown prosecutors initially charged Tetera with inducing the man to have sex with him by threat, but the charge was dropped after going to trial last November.

Tetera fooled at least two other victims in an elaborate, year-long sex-money scam, swindling them of tens of thousands of dollars.

From January 2020 until his arrest in March 2021, they bought him iPhones, a car, and had sex with him.

His first victim, named in court documents as Ms H, believed he was a police dog handler and in an undercover role.

Tetera told her he was a rich businessman, sending her emails from a fictional assistant, Mark, and calling himself “Lord”.

The two were lovers for nine months, during which she bought him a car and an iPhone.

His second victim, a serving police officer Mr L, handed over his body armour vest and patrol car after Tori convinced him she needed them for an anti-corruption operation.

Tetera would later tell police that getting the car was “worth it for the thrill of driving a Holden Commodore”.

He admitted 11 charges last year - six of obtaining by deception, three of impersonating police, and two of possessing police property.

Judge Kathryn Maxwell sentenced him to three years and two months in jail on eight of the charges in July.

Today, Judge Lance added a further 18 months’ jail for his three remaining charges, bringing his total sentence to four years and eight months.

Tetera is a repeat offender - convicted in 2017 and jailed in 2019 also for impersonating police and deception - and was on parole at the time of this latest offending.

He was an easily bored young man skilled at using superficial charm and deceit to create chaos, Judge Maxwell said in her sentencing notes.