A Hawkes Bay man was sentenced to home detention on GST and COVID relief support fraud charges.
Dion Colin Thorne was sentenced in the Hastings District Court on 3 July to 7.5 months home detention and ordered to pay $5,000 in reparation.
He filed false GST claims and applied for a Small Business Cashflow Scheme (SBCS) loan that he knew he wasn’t entitled to.
Thorne owned and ran Denali Hair and Beauty Clinic which ceased business in March 2017.
But between the time the business closed and April 2019 Thorne filed 26 GST returns and claimed $52,474.76 in refunds. The GST returns were distributed between three different bank accounts, two of them in his name.
Inland Revenue started investigating Thorne in January 2019 and tried to interview him as part of that investigation. But he didn’t come forward.
In April 2020 the Small Business Cashflow Scheme was set up to support small businesses adversely affected by the COVID pandemic. Thorne applied for $11,800 and confirmed he met all the criteria. The application was declined.
The sentencing judge acknowledged the mental and emotional stress Thorne had gone through since the charges were laid, the difficulty he had functioning properly and the work he had done since with medication to deal with his anxiety.
But the judge also acknowledged there had to be a sanction imposed against Thorne and sentenced him to the home detention.