Point to Ponder: When is Dishonesty & Fraud a Crime and When Not?

[Perry]

Auckland tenant 'forged landlord's signature' to snag full bond
8 Jan 2020

An Auckland woman who allegedly forged her landlord's signature to have her bond returned has been ordered to pay it back.

"Allegedly" but still ordered to pay it back by the wet bus ticket dispenser?

You what?

Have a look at the media report (especially those about Steve Watson of the Landlady Compliance & Investigation Team) and these sections of the RTA and ask where this is going or should go.

77 Jurisdiction of Tribunal

82 Exclusion of other jurisdictions

83 Transfer of proceedings to District Court

[PC]

Only when an evil LL does it of course.
Just like only white people can be racist and only men commit domestic violence.
Has that "Auckland women" been charged by the police?

[Perry]

From what I can tell: hell no!

The matter gets referred to the wet bus tickets prescription dispensary for tenants.

Aka the pro-tenant, pro-socialism Tenancy Tribunal Kangaroo Kourt.

Wonder how it worked out for the LL, here?

[McDuck]

This sounds like a fairly clear case of formal dishonesty.
Altering legal paperwork without authority to do so is clearly fraud.

On a person level, two wrongs seem to make a right.
If the tenant feels cheated, then they may cheat back.

Street justice, as it were.

I suppose the courts see so much "really bad" stuff that "bad stuff" seems trivial to them.
Anchoring bias.

If I were a judge I would defiantly fine them several times the amount of the fraud, and send them on a ethics education course.
Two wrongs do not make a right, sort of thing.

Oh, Happy New Year everyone.

[Keys]

This popped up in a different thread a while ago so I did an OIA. The bond center cannot confirm exactly how many bonds were released due to forged signatures but can confirm that from 2017 to 2023 out of 1,223,188 bonds refunded, 209 (0.017%) were refunded and created a new coding of "bond debt" No records were available before 2017