Westport woman Sarah Leanne Morris was sentenced in May in the Westport District Court to 12 months’ intensive supervision, 180 hours’ community work and ordered to pay $3000 in reparation.
A woman’s $30,000 fraud that involved claiming travel assistance for “entirely fictitious” appointments for her son has prompted significant changes to the programme.
Westport woman Sarah Leanne Morris was sentenced in May in the Westport District Court to 12 months’ intensive supervision, 180 hours’ community work and ordered to pay $3000 in reparation.
The 39-year-old had earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of forgery, two charges of obtaining by deception and two charges of dishonestly using a document.
The summary of facts, released to the Herald, said the offending related to Morris fraudulently claiming 176 separate vouchers over a two-year period, obtaining $30,000 from Te Whatu Ora on the West Coast.
Te Whatu Ora facilitates funding for clients of limited financial means to ensure they are able to travel as required in order to be able to receive publicly funded medical treatment.
Clients who are entitled to this assistance typically hold a Community Services Card. Claims are made through National Travel Coordinators (NTCs) based in each district.
The NTC in Westport provides assistance by issuing vouchers at 28 cents per kilometre, from the person’s home to the hospital and back. The travel vouchers can only be redeemed at specific petrol stations but are not limited to fuel.
The vouchers can be used to purchase Motor Trade Association vouchers or BP cards. The cards operate like a gift card, with money loaded onto them.
Vouchers are also issued to assist with accommodation where required, capped at a value of $100.
Morris’ son required specialist orthodontic treatment for his teeth and jaw on several occasions.
The summary said Morris’ son had lived with her mother since he was a baby until he was 16. He grew up in Greymouth, while Morris lived in Westport, and had a “distant role”.
On August 11, 2020, Morris’ son had scheduled dental surgery in Christchurch. His grandmother took him to the appointment.
As this surgery was through the Canterbury DHB (now Te Whatu Ora), information was provided about options and eligibility for claiming travel assistance. No claims were made regarding this surgery.
Following the surgery, Morris’ son had some other appointments with a specialist in Christchurch for related private treatment. Morris became involved by offering to take her son to Christchurch for some of the appointments.
She then came by information about travel assistance eligibility for DHB treatment, however as her son’s treatment was not provided through the DHB he was not eligible for financial assistance.
Morris contacted Westport’s NTC, and said her son had appointments for DHB treatment in Christchurch and “induced” him to supply vouchers to assist with travel and accommodation.
The distance from Westport to Christchurch meant the vouchers were for $185, along with the accommodation vouchers of up to $100. These were issued through the West Coast DHB under the Buller district budget.
Morris claimed these on her son’s behalf and used them to facilitate three trips to Christchurch. However, her son received private treatment on these trips, and she had no right to claim the assistance.
Morris’ offending later “escalated sharply”, when she called the NTC she was dealing with and told him she required assistance to take her son for several further medical appointments in Christchurch, scheduled by the DHB. No such appointments were scheduled.
As part of the process, Morris would first phone and leave a voice message detailing the alleged dates of upcoming treatment.
The travel co-ordinator would create travel vouchers from a template with Morris’ son’s name, but also naming Morris as being able to redeem them on her son’s behalf.
The vouchers, which had to be redeemed within seven days, would be left at the Buller Hospital reception, where she would pick them up and sign a receipt.
On April 13, 2021, she redeemed the first of many $185 travel vouchers for “entirely fictitious appointments” in Christchurch.
She did this at the BP petrol station in Westport, using the voucher to load an MTA card with $185 and spending the credit on various goods in the store.
That same month, she acquired four further $185 vouchers and again redeemed them all for their full value at BP in Westport.
She began an “almost unbroken pattern” of repeat offending over the next 18 months, claiming between six and nine vouchers per month for fake appointments on her son’s behalf.
All of these vouchers were redeemed for their full value at either the BP or Caltex petrol stations in Westport.
Morris would sometimes load two or three $185 vouchers at once into cards.
She would spend the vast majority of these cards on food, drinks and cigarettes, with petrol only making up a “small portion”.
On three occasions she claimed accommodation vouchers and redeemed them at a motel in Christchurch in connection with her son’s private treatment.
In total, Morris dishonestly claimed $1910 in travel and petrol vouchers in relation to her son’s private treatment.
In June 2022, her son turned 18 and was told he would need to arrange his own Community Services Card and start making his own claims. He was unaware his mother had to date claimed $21,000 on his behalf.
Morris continued to “falsely portray” her son was under her care and required her assistance, stressing an urgency that was “completely fabricated”.
Between June 24, 2022, and September 16, 2022, Morris dishonestly obtained and used another 35 travel vouchers, obtaining another $6475 which she spent at the local petrol stations.
Morris’ son by now had a full-time job and was paying for his own travel costs for his treatment.
Te Whatu Ora staff eventually became aware of the “inordinately” high number of claims when they reviewed her application history after she refused to comply with requests for her son to make his own applications.
On September 30, 2022, responding to several requests from Morris for travel assistance vouchers, the travel co-ordinator sent her an email asking for proof of her son’s upcoming appointments.
She said the clinic could not post her a letter, as their building was getting renovated, and asked if an email would be okay.
She then created a fraudulent letter purporting to be from a registered orthodontist in Christchurch. She copied her details from her website into an electronic word-processing document.
The letter was dated October 2, 2022, and addressed to Morris’ son, advising of four scheduled appointments, which were all fake.
On October 4, she emailed a copy of the letter to the travel co-ordinator.
Morris then followed up with a phone call to inquire whether that had been sufficient, further alleging in the voicemail she required travel assistance vouchers to assist her son.
However, by now the game was up and her claims were denied.
When spoken to by police she said she was guilty, but declined to provide an explanation for her actions and declined to be formally interviewed.
Te Whatu Ora general manager for Te Tai o Poutini West Coast, Philip Wheble, told the Herald an audit was undertaken in 2022 by an internal auditor based in Canterbury after the fraud was uncovered.
“The main outcome from the review is a change to the way we advance fuel and other assistance to eligible patients, which we are looking to address by means of a new secure electronic card system for payment of advance fuel and other assistance.
“We will also be increasing systems checks and dual confirmation of appointment attendance before further advances of petrol or accommodation support is issued.”
The results of the audit are being investigated further to confirm if there are any other potential cases of fraud.
From a national perspective, a Te Whatu Ora spokesperson said the National Travel Assistance (NTA) programme was now operated through a national registration portal, “improving oversight of access to the NTA”.
At Morris’ sentencing, Judge Murray Hunt said the fraud was “prolonged”.
“You used the circumstances of your son and the trusting nature of a DHB employee to commit this fraud repeatedly. It is serious offending.”
The offending was a “significant and serious departure” from what had been a “law-abiding lifestyle”.
There were no victim impact statements, however, the money taken came out of public money set aside for a particular purpose, he said.
“You deprive others who might have had access to it of the legitimate use of it, and so it is a fraud on the community.”
He believed intensive supervision and community work, along with reparation, was the appropriate sentence.
“You are very fortunate to be going home today, Ms Morris,” he said.
Sam Sherwood is a Christchurch-based reporter who covers crime. He is a senior journalist who joined the Herald in 2022, and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.