A man has been ordered to pay back more than $10,000 he conned out of people via the Trade Me website.
Kalum Geoffrey Pritchard, 20, of Pukehina, was jailed for 12 months and was declined leave to apply for home detention.
Judge Chris McGuire also ordered him to pay reparation of $10,215to his 24 victims, on top of the $6090 he has still to pay to victims of other crimes he has committed.
Pritchard pleaded guilty last month to 24 charges of fraud by selling items to people on the Trade Me website, but failing to come up with the goods.
The 24 sums of money he received ranged from $91 to $1200.
Judge McGuire said Pritchard had significantly damaged the lives of the people he had ripped off, including students and sole parents.
He had also shown "utter contempt and disregard" for the rules of the road evident by the number of driving infringements he had accrued.
"I have a picture of a young man of quite extraordinary talents... These talents have been ruined by alcohol, drugs and what I would regard as your youthful arrogance," the judge said.
He said Pritchard had come to the attention of psychiatric services and had suffered from depression, for which he was now taking medication.
Through his lawyer, Paula Hayman-Halton, Pritchard apologised for the distress he had caused people he had ripped off.
Pritchard also pleaded guilty to four charges of unlawfully interfering with a motor vehicle and charges of being unlawfully in an enclosed yard, burglary and breaching community work, for which he was convicted and discharged.
Pritchard told Rotorua District Court yesterday he needed the money so he could go on the run because he had not done his court-ordered community work.
The judge described the excuse as "bizarre".
However, $20,290 in fines, mostly for driving infringements, was wiped.
