1. BUSINESS 7 SPORT 16
America’s
most
hated
man
Dick
Smith
speaks
out
THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 2016$1.80 Call 0800 339 000 to subscribe and save.
LIVE UPDATES stuff.co.nz
WORLD 12 PORT 16
Our
Lydia’s
the
best
Weather Cloudy periods, northeasterlies. 12°C 21°C Inside Business 7
World 11,12
Television 10
Summer pics 8
Classifieds 19
Crosswords 18
Racing 14
Sport 15-17,20
Young girl
was ‘pretty
messed up’
PHILLIPA YALDEN
and CLAIRE FITZJAMES
A learner driver accidentally ran over a girl in
a Whangamata supermarket carpark and
bystanders lifted the vehicle off the girl.
James Hope, Josh Nicholls and Ferg Hope
were first on the scene. .
Bystanders who lifted a car off a young
girl after a learner driver ran over her
say she was ‘‘pretty messed up’’.
The incident unfolded in the carpark
of a supermarket in the holiday hotspot
of Whangamata on Wednesday.
Police said a young woman was being
taken for a driving lesson by her mother
just before midday.
While learning to park in the New
World carpark she accidentally hit the
accelerator instead of the brake, police
said on Te Awamutu’s Police Facebook
page.
At the same time, four young children
were riding past along the footpath on
their scooters.
‘‘The car has mounted the footpath
and taken the little girl with her and
under the car,’’ police said.
The dark coloured sedan ended up in
the bushes edging the carpark with the
11-year-old girl trapped underneath.
Police said bystanders rushed to the
aid of the girl and managed to lift the car
up to free her.
Josh Nicholls was one of the first on
the scene and said he heard the victim’s
father ‘‘going crazy’’.
‘‘At first we thought she had just been
bowled over, but she went under the
car’s guard,’’ he said.
‘‘We ran over and tried to figure out
how to get her out and just got a whole lot
of boys and lifted it up.’’
It took about 10 people to lift the car up
to get access to her.
‘‘She was pretty cut up and messed up.
I just wanted to lift the car up and get her
out as fast as possible.’’
She was taken to Thames Hospital
accompanied by her mother and father.
A hospital spokesperson said the
young girl was in a stable condition and
was due for release.
Nicholls said the driver of the car was
standing in the background and was a
‘bit cut up’ about the incident. Her
mother also helped lift the car off the
injured girl. Police said the incident was
traumatic and scary for everyone.
School fraud: A $125,000 job wasn’t enough to fund
her lifestyle of horses, jewels and glamour
GREEDMIKE MATHER
GRANT’S ASSETS:
❚ Sole owner of residential properties in
Chartwell and Huntington, Hamilton
❚ Sole director and shareholder of JT
Equine NZ Limited
WHAT SHE STOLE:
❚ $768,950.52 in supposed payments to
Hawkins Construction, redirected to her
accounts
❚ $7500, supposedly for asbestos
removal from principal’s house, actually
paid to a friend
❚ $6876.63, supposedly for insurance on
a tractor mower and other school
equipment, actually for her own
insurance
❚ $5178.16, supposedly a payment to
engineering firm Caledonian Design for
resource consent for school food
technology block redevelopment
❚ $2000, again a forged invoice to
Caledonian Design, supposedly for
resource consent for a community
relations centre
❚ $1492 on flights for two to
Christchurch, she said was taken by the
principal
Tessa Grant defrauded
Waikato Dio of approx
$400,000 in money.
PHOTO: REBEKAH
PARSONS-KING/FAIRFAX NZ.
She was in a job that paid $125,000 a year,
yet Tessa Grant wanted more – almost
$800,000 more, which she stole from the
top Hamilton school she worked for.
The funds she siphoned out of Waikato
Diocesan School for Girls’ coffers was spent
on the purchase of land on which she
wanted to build an equestrian centre, as
well as on a horse, international travel for
that horse, and a $40,000 diamond ring.
Tessa Fiona Grant, 40, who was
employed as commercial manager at the
school for 14 months until her resignation in
September, pleaded guilty to seven fraud-
related charges when she appeared in the
Hamilton District Court on Wednesday.
Court documents reveal that, through a
series of covert transactions and forged
documents, she took $795,000 from the
school into her own accounts between
December 2014 and August 2015.
She was remanded on bail by Judge
Robert Spear for sentencing in March.
Grant, who had previously been granted
name suppression, did not have it renewed
by her counsel Michael Foley, who
appeared on behalf of Auckland lawyer
Guyon Foley.
She had been charged with two counts
of using a document for pecuniary
advantage, two counts of altering a
document and three charges of using
forged documents.
Five of the charges carry a maximum
penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.
Speaking after her court appearance,
Grant tearfully said she had entered into a
confidentiality agreement with the school
and was unwilling to give details about her
offending.
Waikato Dio principal Vicky McLennan
confirmed the school’s lawyers and Grant’s
legal counsel had entered into an
arrangement. She said although Grant’s
actions had caused a financial loss to the
school, there had been no loss of face, and
the school’s board of trustees – which
consists of some of the Waikato’s top
lawyers, accountants and company heads –
had detected and speedily dealt with the
fraud.
The first inkling McLennan and the
school staff had that Grant had been up to
no good came with the discovery of a
receipt for a $1492 return flight to
Christchurch in April last year that
McLennan and her husband had
supposedly taken as a gift from the school
board. In reality it was Grant and her
husband Jason Grant who had taken the
trip.
It turned out to be the tip of an iceberg
of swindling.
The biggest and possibly most blatant of
her crimes related to work that was done
by Hawkins Construction, which had been
contracted to redevelop the school’s food
technology block and also do work on the
principal’s house.
The total cost of the two projects was
$600,000. However an examination of the
school accounts revealed the total value of
invoices purportedly paid to Hawkins came
to $1.14 million – almost double the actual
cost of the work.
Twelve invoices or payment claims from
Hawkins were located in the school records.
Of these, only six had been issued by the
construction firm, with the rest being
forgeries. Using her authority, Grant had
approved the invoices for payment by
direct credit and coding against a budget.
She then accessed the school’s banking
system and directed the payment to her
personal bank account.
Another deception involved her using a
cheque to withdraw $7500 from the school
account on the pretence that it was for
asbestos removal from the conversion of
the principal’s house. This was untrue and
the cheque was made out to one of Grant’s
friends. McLennan confirmed a small
amount of asbestos had been found inside
the house, in a cupboard.
Full reparation had been paid to the
school by Grant on December 18, including
$105,523.63 to cover interest, legal and
related costs the organisation had incurred.
‘‘The school is grateful for the diligence
and vigilance of its staff and boards and
thankful that robust financial systems
enabled early and accurate detection of the
offending,’’ McLennan said in a statement,
later adding it was the discovery of the
forged flight receipts that had led to the
discovery of the rest of Grant’s offending.
In July, Grant bought a 13-hectare
property in Whatawhata for about
$900,000, with the aim of using it as an
equestrian centre, complete with indoor
arena. That purchase was made in the
name of JT Equine Ltd which was a
company she had formed earlier that
month and of which she was the sole
director.
Prior to her employment at the school,
Grant was the general manager of Skycity
Hamilton. A spokeswoman for the casino
said the company had a policy of not
speaking to the media about employees or
matters that were before the courts and
would not be making any comment about
Grant.
Grant was also formerly a committee
member of the Waikato Equestrian Centre.
Judy Williams, who was vice president at
the time, said she had left about seven
years ago, and most of the board
membership had changed in that time.
Jason Grant is listed in the electoral roll
as a property manager.
What she bought:
$900,000
property in
Whatawhata
$55,850
on jewellery, including
a $40,000 platinum
diamond ring
$285,000
horse coach
$182,500
for truck chassis
$68,579
on an eventing horse
from the UK
$31,851
on international
transport for the horse
$16,071
on a horse float
$14,735
on agricultural
machinery
$18,371
on horse gear