Lisa Donnelly, pictured at her sentencing on Thursday, had mulitple aliases that were not checked by the prosecution.

An accomplished fraudster has now pulled off the ultimate swindle: she's escaped a jail term after the court failed to see through her fake identities.

Lisa Donnelly pleaded guilty to fleecing a 92-year-old woman of her life savings.

Judge Christopher Field sentenced her to home detention. He cut her some slack because, he said, she had led a relatively crime-free life.

KENT BLECHYNDEN/ FAIRFAX NZ Donnelly, then known as Lisa Clement, pictured at her sentencing in 2004 after she defrauded the Ministry of Social Development of $1.9 million.

But he was never told of previous convictions she'd racked up under multiple aliases, including a notorious $2 million fraud.

READ MORE:

* Caregiver charged with fleecing elderly woman of most of her life savings

* Support for starting driving ban after jail

He was unaware that Donnelly used several aliases, including the name Lisa Clement, when she famously defrauded the Ministry of Social Development of $1.9 million.

MAARTEN HOLL/ FAIRFAX NZ Donnelly is pictured here outside court in Wellington in 2004 with her Louise Sziranyi.

She had also racked up more than 40 other convictions between her three aliases.

Media reports when she was first caught in 2003 said Clement "failed spectacularly" to conceal her fraud and her resulting extravagant lifestyle.

Among the bizarre purchases found stashed in her Wainuiomata home were a model rainbow trout, 54 statuettes of cats, 18 James Bond Swatch boxes, assorted James Bond cosmetics, a Barbie & Bond two-figure boxed set, a Holden wall clock and a radio-controlled model Aston Martin.

COLIN SMITH Judy Ashton, whose daughter Debbie was killed by a recidivist drink-driver who was treated as a first-time offender by the courts, says there needs to be a law change that stops people from hiding behind different identities.

But despite all this, this week the prosecutor and the judge remained oblivious to her fraudulent alter egos.

The victim's family is "gobsmacked" at the courtroom blunder and resulting lenient sentence.

Police are now investigating why their prosecutor was unaware of Donnelly's history, despite it having been headline news around New Zealand.

SUPPLIED Debbie Ashton was killed after recidivist drink-driver Jonathan Barclay crashed into her. He was fined $500.

Earlier this year, Donnelly pleaded guilty to dishonestly using the bank card of the senior Waiheke Island woman whose home she visited regularly as a care assistant with Waiheke Health Trust.

In 2004 Donnelly had been jailed for more than five years after swindling $1.9 million while working for Work and Income New Zealand, by billing the ministry with phony invoices, while also claiming $14,000 in benefits.

​In 2015 she got hold of the Eftpos card belonging to a woman in her care and siphoned $36,000 out of the victim's account.

Judge Field said the offending was aggravated by the vulnerability of the victim, but he sentenced Donnelly to just 150 hours community work and seven months home detention.

He said reports provided to him showed Donnelly had a history of dishonesty pre-1992. But Judge Field said that didn't warrant an uplift in her sentence.

After the sentencing Donnelly's lawyer, Adam Couchman, brought the matter back after realising neither the prosecution nor the judge were aware of Clement's significant criminal history.

But Judge Field declined to re-sentence Donnelly, saying he did not want to "tinker" with the original sentence. "I don't feel comfortable sentencing and resentencing," he said.

Couchman said Donnelly's criminal convictions were encapsulated in a pre-sentence report written by Probation Services, but believed it was the responsibility of police, not defence, to ensure the court had the relevant information.

"I can certainly say the Probation Services were in the clear, they had all the correct information. It's the police that didn't have the correct information. The question is, would it have made a difference? I don't think so."

He believed home detention would still have been available to Donnelly, although the prosecutor told Judge Field at the time that given Donnelly's history they would have argued for a higher starting point that would have seen her become ineligible for home detention.

The Ministry of Justice confirmed it is the role of prosecution services to ensure all details relating to a defendant are before the court. "The Court can only decide on the information it has before it, and it is the role of the prosecuting agency to ensure all information regarding defendant's identification is complete before it is put before the Court," a spokesman said.

Auckland City Police prosecutions manager Sergeant Martin Cahill said police were "looking into" why they weren't aware of the alias. "When forming a prosecution case police use verified identification information such as fingerprints, photographs and DNA to establish whether someone has an alias," he said.

"Police always strive to get the best result for victims and, in this case, we are looking into why we were not aware of the alias, as part of our consideration into whether we will appeal the sentence."

﻿

Family of the victim said the sentence was inadequate.

Granddaughter Claudine Crabtree said the family was "bloody disappointed" with the outcome, with any appeal likely to drag out for months. "We were gobsmacked that all her history hadn't come to light," she said. "It's a really big oversight and frankly it's not good enough."

﻿Auckland University law academic Dr Bill Hodge said judges were within their right to insist a faulty decision be sent for appeal rather than recall it.

"Let's say there's a sentence and the media pick it up and there's sort of an outcry – 'oh gee, why do you slap him with a wet bus ticket when he should have gone to jail for life' – and that sort of thing," Hodge said.

"The next day the judge says 'gee whiz there's a lot of hostility, I better recall this and do it again', and I don't think we want that.

"It may well be inadequate or faulty on some grounds, but it's very difficult for a judge to say 'I'm gonna run this again'.

"If this judge is saying as far as I was concerned it was a done deal and it wasn't simply an adjournment for further arguments to be made, he could justifiably say to himself look to me it was a done deal and the only avenue is appeal."

​HISTORY OF DECEPTION

In 2000 Lisa Donnelly was going by her married name of Lisa Clement and gained employment at Work and Income through an employment agency by falsifying her job application form.

She added an extra middle name and lied about her date of birth, subsequently covering up her historical convictions and the fact she was receiving benefits from Work and Income.

Over 28-months she billed Work and Income nearly $2 million through 67 fake invoices.

Donnelly was caught when a manager discovered part of a forged document bearing his name on a photocopier near Donnelly's desk.



She was found to have a number of aliases including Lisa Ramsbottom, Lisa Donnelly and Lisa De Silva, and had managed to hide her history.

"She lived in Wainuiomata, she did not pull up to the front door in a Jaguar, she did not wear a fur coat. She looked like an ordinary person, " the Ministry's then-chief executive Peter Hughes said at the time.

NOT THE FIRST TIME

Recidivist drink driver Jonathan Barclay should have been behind bars for his appalling driving history when he crashed into 20-year-old Debbie Ashton in 2006, killing her.

He had previously been jailed for driving offences but after participating in the witness protection programme he was able to get a new license under a new name.

When he was again caught drink driving the courts treated him as a first time offender and was fined $500.

A month later, Ashton was dead.

An inquiry was held, and in the resulting 2008 report written by Kristy McDonald QC, said it fell to police to develop better systems to ensure the identity of recidivist offenders with aliases not go ignored.

Mother Judy Ashton said a decade on from her daughter's death it was clear police systems still needed work.

"I think that unless there's a law change that stops a person from changing their name then this isn't going to stop," she said. "It's a mockery where we have these people coming before the courts but with different names.

"Yes maybe the police have slipped up, maybe the courts have slipped up but people shouldn't be in a position where they can change their names and change their identities."