John Slavich's life has been ruined by his dishonesty convictions - and he's always pleaded his innocence.

Missing evidence, the dubious jail-cell testimony of a career criminal, and claims later proven to be false – why the fraud conviction that ruined John Slavich's life should be reviewed. Investigation by Steve Kilgallon.

John Slavich was a respectable Hamilton accountant, a partner in a major firm. Happily married, with two kids, a family home, a farm and a beach house.

That was in 2002. Within four years, found guilty of six dishonesty offences, his name was mud. He lost his career, wife and the Waihī Beach bach, was bankrupted, served nine months in jail, and spent more than $150,000 in legal fees and reparations.

He's still fighting to clear his name. Since his release from Spring Hill prison, Slavich has taken more than 70 legal actions.

He's unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeal. And the Supreme Court. And sought a pardon from the Governor-General. He's tried to sue his co-accused. And the prosecution lawyer. And the Attorney-General.

Not surprisingly, he's been officially labelled a vexatious litigant.

It has consumed Slavich, who is an intense, somewhat saturnine, but extremely polite man in his late 60s. He's intelligent, and knows his obsession makes him look like a "nutter". But what if he's an innocent man, convicted on the word of a "professional fraudster"?

A fresh study of his conviction – part of an elaborate multi-million dollar fraud case that saw 25 others also convicted – exposes what appear to be several major flaws. Experienced investigator Tim McKinnel has studied some of Slavich's file and believes the integrity of his convictions must now be questioned.

'WHEN IT CAME TO DOLLARS, THEY WERE JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE'

BRUCE MERCER/STUFF Miles McKelvy, left, and Arden Fatu in the dock.

The police called it Operation Allsorts, because the investigation netted people from all sorts of backgrounds. At the heart of a complex property fraud worth $6.4m were a trio of fraudsters named Miles McKelvy, Arden Fatu and Leslie Orchard.

Convicted alongside them were a car salesman, a student, lawyers, mortgage brokers and accountants – including John Slavich.

"You're talking about prim and proper people, upmarket people," says Orchard now. "But when it came down to dollars, they were just like anyone else."

Orchard's trio ran a series of frauds. In some, they tricked struggling homeowners into signing away the title to their homes, then drew down loans using the homes as security without any plans to repay. In others, they simply obtained the titles to freehold properties, pretended to be the owners, and got loans that way.

McKelvy, who was on parole for fraud, ran a loan shop called Fast Money with ex-boxer Fatu on the edge of a car yard in Hamilton.

JEFF BRASS/STUFF Fast Money, McKelvy and Fatu's loans business, was the base for the scams, the Crown argued.

When he met Orchard, the serial fraudster with multiple fake identities was calling himself Paul Adams. Slavich would also meet Orchard as Adams, but for clarity, we'll mostly refer to him as Orchard.

The scam that ruined Slavich's life came about when the conspirators realised solicitors had stopped ordering the full version of property titles during conveyancing work. Instead, they would obtain a short electronic form, showing only the owner's name and any mortgages. It meant that, with the right documents, freehold property was ripe for identity fraud.

The Crown believed McKelvy found suitable names, Orchard went to the Land Transfer Office for the title and the council for the rates notice, and together they would forge IDs, using a copy of Orchard's genuine passport.

BRUCE MERCER/STUFF Les Orchard in the dock in Hamilton, during the Allsorts trials, 2003.

They tried the scam first in October 2002 but the loan was declined due to doubts over the authenticity of Orchard's faked documents. Undeterred, they tried again, and successfully secured $22,000 from ACE Financial Services of Blenheim with the same name, "Charles Beamsley". Orchard told the court: "The Beamsley loan proved the system worked, so we carried on and utilised the system to obtain larger loans."

That's when Slavich became part of the story.

A CONSPIRACY COOKED AT BURGER KING

Orchard and McKelvy had an "emergency" meeting place at a Burger King in suburban Hamilton. "If the phone rang and it was 'meet me at Burger King', you would know there was something wrong. It was a place we could meet that was miles from anywhere," Orchard said in evidence.

This time, Burger King was the venue for the start of some lucrative business.

DOMINICO ZAPATA/STUFF Scene of the crime? The Burger King in Chartwell, Hamilton.

Slavich had been McKelvy's accountant, and, McKelvy says, became a good friend. After a prison term, McKelvy's probation conditions involved regular financial reports. Slavich agreed to help if he paid promptly, never visited his office at Hamilton accountancy practice Drew Bullen, and never described Slavich as his accountant.

"I didn't know all the other things he was into," Slavich says. "He is a likeable rogue, a big bulls….er, and I am sure he knew more about what was going on than he let on."

Around this time, Slavich was looking for short-term loans for a friend and client named Terry Smith, who ran a tuna fishing business. Slavich himself had invested, borrowing $375,000 to buy a tuna boat from Ecuador.

Smith needed $25,000 quickly to buy a boat from the Solomon Islands which was being repossessed; but his business had just $671 in the bank. While a good haul was lucrative, the tuna business was inconsistent. Smith had a record of taking short-term loans and approached "bottom of the barrel" lenders. In court, he was even questioned about an alleged meeting he (and possibly Slavich, although he can't remember such an occasion) had with two senior gang members over a large debt.

With both needing cash, McKelvy put Orchard and Slavich together, organising a Sunday afternoon meeting at Burger King.

The outcome was that Slavich helped prepare a loan proposal for $75,000, secured by a four-month mortgage on a Hamilton rental owned by farmer Justin Booth. The real Booth, of course, knew nothing about it.

With a fake driver's licence in Booth's name, Orchard visited an Auckland lawyer, Umarji Mohammed, to do the paperwork. Then the money was distributed: $44,000 to Orchard and co, $28,376 to Terry Smith's company, the rest in professional fees.

A week later, Orchard saw Slavich with another proposal: this time $400,000 for a wealthy farmer named Richie Hannon, who supposedly needed quick, quiet cash to resolve a legal issue involving his son.

Orchard had searched Hannon's property titles, and found 10, with big acreage, all freehold. "It was," he told the court, "Christmas time come early." Again, the real Hannon (who died shortly before Slavich went on trial) was completely unaware.

Slavich drew up the deal and sent 20 pages of background to the broker Orchard had found, Carolyn Gibbs of Auckland company Legend International. Orchard again visited a lawyer to complete the formalities (here, a full historical title would have shown the land was bought by the real Hannon in 1943 – nine years before Orchard's fake driver's licence said he was born).

In both cases, the lawyers and brokers dealt with Slavich, but crucially, were never in the same room as both Slavich and Orchard, or on the same conference calls.

IAIN McGREGOR/STUFF The real Richie Hannon was an elderly Cambridge farmer who knew nothing of the scams. He passed away before Slavich's trial.

This time, Slavich's cut was $49,000, again as a loan for Terry Smith. Orchard called it Slavich's "payment for organising and giving credibility to the deal". However, it was accepted in court that Slavich never kept anything from either loan (although, legally, he could still be found guilty of deception).

Orchard intended to spread the remaining $286,000 (after fees) around: $40,000 for McKelvy and $49,000 for himself, $29,000 of that buying a BMW 750i and a Mitsubishi Pajero. Police knew the precise breakdown because when they raided Orchard's office, they found a piece of paper entitled "When the money comes".

While this money never arrived – the net had closed in – the emboldened fraudsters tried unsuccessfully to raise another "Hannon" loan, for $800,000, through a different broker. Instead, early on November 14, 2002, police arrested Orchard, who told his arresting officer: "I'm a bit busy right now, can we make an appointment for tomorrow?" He put his hand out to shake, and the handcuffs went on. "Oh, it's that serious."

HOW IT ALL UNRAVELLED

Slavich can't recall who told him the police were investigating, and how he realised the deals were dodgy.

But he remembers ringing the lawyer, Umarji Mohammed, and asking him to describe Booth, and his horror at realising the fake Booth was Orchard.

ABIGAIL DOUGHERTY/STUFF His conviction ruined John Slavich's life. He's still fighting it, 15 years later.

About two weeks later, police raided Drew Bullen accountants. Senior partner Peter Bullen wasn't impressed when five officers produced a warrant to search Slavich's office. Slavich admits he should have told his partners, but he was embarrassed, and also assumed he'd be called as a Crown witness.

He gave a full, voluntary statement without a lawyer present. He thought the cops were then working out whether he was the Mr Big of the operation.

He figured when they realised he wasn't, they lost interest; he was never reinterviewed. But a full two years later, they returned to arrest him.

Slavich was shocked to face 10 dishonesty charges, even more surprised to lose his name suppression before trial – "that basically f...ed my business" – but convinced he would easily clear his name.

The case against him was he had conspired, principally with Orchard, to secure the money while knowing that Hannon and Booth weren't real and the loan applications were fake.

Who was present on that Sunday afternoon in Burger King was vital.

The police never asked Slavich how he met "Booth" or even to describe what he looked like – in his statement, it's merely a single sentence. But in court, the lead investigator, Detective Sergeant Simon Eckersley, said only Slavich and Orchard were there, forging the start of their conspiracy, and police never located anyone else who attended. Orchard concurred.

But McKelvy confirms he was present, performing introductions before taking his son to eat at another table. And McKelvy, Slavich and Orchard all now agree a fourth man was also there. He was introduced, says Slavich, as Justin Booth, who needed a loan. Booth was also willing to bundle a loan for Terry Smith into the deal in exchange for the prospect of securing a job on Smith's fishing boat (a complication which didn't help Slavich in court).

PETER DRURY/STUFF Detective Simon Eckersley, pictured in 2007, with the police files from Operation Allsorts behind him. He has since left the police force.

This man was Tony Tuhoro, a friend of Orchard's, who described him in court as "a bit of a hanger-on who wanted to make a quick buck".

In Orchard's diary for that date is an entry reminding him to pay $2000 to "TT". Orchard had a habit of using "his boys" to front for him during deals when his web of identities would otherwise be difficult to maintain.

Police never interviewed nor charged Tuhoro.

But in 2009, a private investigator engaged by Slavich tracked Tuhoro down and obtained a reluctant admission he was there that day.

If John Slavich knew he was about to commit identity fraud, why did he need to have an extra actor along pretending to be Justin Booth?

WHO TO BELIEVE?

When it came to trial, Slavich opted for it to be heard "judge-alone" – that is, with no jury – and not to give evidence in his defence. He admits both decisions were mistakes.

Justice Paul Heath said his verdict would essentially hinge on whether he preferred the evidence of John Slavich or Les Orchard.

SUNGMI KIM/STUFF Career criminal Les Orchard was last released from prison five years ago. He's now living in Wellington.

If he believed Orchard, who said Slavich was a willing conspirator, then Slavich couldn't have been duped. The Crown had to prove Slavich knew Orchard was impersonating Booth and Hannon. As Slavich points out, frauds such as these are identical to legitimate deals.

"The only point where it is different is that the person sits in the chair and signs as the owner – and that's where the fraud happens in that moment."

The police tried to prove Slavich knew Orchard. They had bumped into one another briefly in a lawyer's hallway some four years earlier. Slavich admits that. "But that's not knowing someone."

A receptionist testified Orchard had fronted at Drew Bullen one day and said "Les for John".

But under cross-examination, it was revealed she wasn't interviewed at the time, couldn't recall the names of any of Slavich's other clients, and hadn't remembered Orchard's name until it was mentioned to her four years later and she was shown a photo of Orchard with his name underneath.

Similarly, attempts to prove Orchard had revealed himself to Slavich in his office didn't stand up. Orchard's claims he'd signed a string of legal documents in Booth's name, witnessed by Slavich, was disproved: all of them in fact bore lawyer Mohammed's signature.

Orchard also told a story about taking a document from Slavich for Booth to sign, and returning unbelievably quickly with it, and them both laughing. That document, however, was never produced – and, says Slavich, didn't exist.

How did Slavich not unmask Orchard? Partly because Slavich never met Hannon, and had met Booth just once, and had never found that unusual. And partly because most of the business was conducted by phone or fax, meaning Orchard's multiple identities didn't overlap. The deals, say Slavich, were straightforward mortgages. He smiles wryly: "I would do it again! I would do it all again."

Orchard wasn't originally due to testify. Just two weeks before trial, he was added to the Crown's witness list. It left no time to take a pre-trial deposition from Orchard.

Slavich believes that was unfair because it never allowed his defence to test Orchard's other inconsistencies: for example, if they'd known what he'd say about the Burger King meeting, they would've put McKelvy and Tuhoro up as witnesses.

Orchard was the first Operation Allsorts defendant to plead guilty. His 69-page statement incriminated most of his fellow defendants, and he was already serving six years in Spring Hill when he agreed to testify against Slavich after a jail-cell visit from police. Orchard says the cops persuaded him to talk by saying Slavich had bad-mouthed him. "Right, sign me up," Orchard responded.

Shortly after, he wrote to his lawyer, Joe Hamblett, suggesting Slavich could pay him to keep quiet: "I have been asked to be a witness for the Prosecution of which I have no problem unless of course something in the dollar amount finds its way into my account." Orchard dismissed that in court as a private joke, and doesn't want to speak of it now.

When Orchard agreed to be interviewed by Stuff, Slavich was delighted, especially when Orchard initially said on the phone that Slavich was a "scapegoat".

Among Slavich's failed legal actions was privately prosecuting Orchard for perjury. Despite that, he pinned much hope on Orchard. "I don't care if he's found God, as long as he tells the truth," he said eagerly. He hoped for an affidavit from Orchard testifying to his innocence – or at least, conceding some of his evidential inconsistencies.

That confused Orchard. "But what would be the point?" he asked. On hearing it's to receive a pardon, Orchard responded: "But that will never happen."

LAWRENCE SMITH/STUFF Les Orchard still maintains John Slavich was guilty.

Anyway, Orchard thinks Slavich is guilty. "He's no fool, but I think he got blown away by the easy money, because every deal we put through him, he takes his bit off the top."

Why then, did he describe him initially as a scapegoat? "He was left high and dry in the end. There was no-one there to for him to fall back on."

Slavich's pursuit of redemption perplexes him. "He's been to jail, he's got the T-shirt, he's been bankrupt... Just move on. But he is guilty."

ABIGAIL DOUGHERTY/STUFF Slavich has been declared a vexatious litigant, but insists he is not a "nutter".

Everyone was? "Yes. Everyone was there with their hands out."

Orchard's credibility was hotly debated in court. The Crown said while Orchard was a liar, his evidence had a "ring of truth" and was backed up by the documents. Slavich's lawyer Mike McIvor said it ought to be dismissed outright.

When Orchard was back before the court for subsequent Allsorts charges, judge Robert Spear asked: "What jury in this country could possibly rely on Mr Orchard's evidence in relation to co-offenders?" Orchard called himself a "professional fraudster"; his career total of convictions now stands at 1160.

In his decision, Justice Heath said Orchard took such perverse pride in his illegal work that "much of his evidence about the way in which the frauds were perpetrated might be truthful" but said he would treat it with caution and accept it only if it was corroborated.

For this, he relied principally upon two witnesses: lawyer Umarji Mohamed and broker Carolyn Gibbs.

Heath said Mohamed's testimony corroborated the claim Orchard was Booth all along – and Slavich would have known it. But as Slavich points out, the three men were never in a room together, so it was entirely possible for Orchard to present himself as different people.

And Gibbs, curiously, was never in court. By the time of the trial, she had married and become Carolyn Calder, and was pregnant. Complications with the pregnancy meant she couldn't travel to give evidence.

Instead, it was agreed she would be interviewed by the opposing lawyers, with the judge's clerk taking notes, and an agreed document of her evidence submitted, accompanied by an earlier statement prepared by police. The judge made it clear he would not read the clerk's transcript, as it wasn't official evidence.

However, Calder identified five incorrect paragraphs that had been somehow added to her original statement. To Slavich, these paragraphs were vital to the case against him, suggesting a much deeper involvement in the deals. So the defence said they would accept the statement as evidence only if accompanied by the transcript pointing out those flaws.

In the official court file, the statement was admitted, but the transcript was filed in a marked "non-evidence" section.

Slavich believes the judge never read it. His judgment certainly suggests so, saying Gibbs' evidence gave "credence" to Orchard's. Slavich told the Court of Appeal he was "devastated" by the discovery.

Another issue for Slavich in Heath's judgment was around paperwork. The Crown believed Slavich completed a deed showing Terry Smith's debt to Booth only after he realised police were investigating, to cover his tracks. This was based on the document's "creation date" of 8.03am on November 25, 2002 – 10 days after Orchard's arrest. However, the document's "last save" date was the exact same time and date – giving Slavich just seconds to compose a two-page agreement.

Actually, said Slavich the document dated to November 15 on another computer, and he'd merely transferred it using a floppy disk – and IT experts seemed to agree with him. The deed was later changed again, to transfer Smith's obligations to Pennies from Heaven, a company controlled by McKelvy, who had apparently agreed to help out. Slavich says Smith later repaid the capital debts – but not the interest or penalties.

There are, of course, some uncomfortable aspects for Slavich: Heath couldn't find any credible reason why Booth and Hannon might want to lend money to his fishing boat client Terry Smith. He also questioned why Slavich never asked why the loans were being spread around to various people by Orchard, or why he'd never met Hannon at all. (Slavich says neither are unusual: he would often deal through brokers and the recipient's identities were not his business.)

There's also the issue of why he never considered "Booth" nor "Hannon" clients, despite working for them, and never charged them, and why Orchard's pseudonym Paul Adams' name didn't feature on the paperwork.

But Slavich believes there were enough errors in the trial itself, even without McKelvy and Orchard's subsequent statements, that the conviction is unsafe. He's exchanged extensive correspondence with Heath, now retired from the bench.

Heath politely declined an interview, saying that it was an "important principle… that judges do not comment on specific decisions they have made. The reasons that they give must speak for themselves."

JEFF BRASS/STUFF Justice Paul Heath with the Chief Justice, Sian Elias, at his swearing in in 2002 at the High Court at Hamilton. He's now retired from the bench.

'INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS' EVIDENCE

Experienced private investigator Tim McKinnel, a former police officer who secured the release of the wrongly convicted Teina Pora, reviewed some of the documents of the Slavich case and is concerned about the integrity of his convictions.

"Any case that leans heavily on the evidence of a recidivist fraudster is fraught," says McKinnel. "In this case, a version of events recounted by Orchard is a fundamental building block for part of the case against Mr Slavich. Orchard is a practised liar and he appears to have attempted to blackmail Slavich in advance of the case proceeding."

McKinnel says while the judge said Orchard's evidence was corroborated by other evidence, doubt has been cast on the accuracy of that supporting material.

LAWRENCE SMITH/STUFF Investigator Tim McKinnel says Slavich's conviction is highly questionable. McKinnel played a key role in the release from prison of the wrongly convicted Teina Pora.

"Orchard's evidence is in the realm of jailhouse snitch evidence – interesting and apparently convincing, but incredibly dangerous. In my view this type of evidence should be excluded, absent overwhelming evidence corroborating it."

McKinnel believes there were issues with incomplete investigative work, troubling identification evidence and procedural flaws at trial.

"The question is, do these issues, cumulatively, undermine the case against Slavich? The courts and the Ministry of Justice have determined that they do not, but I am less convinced. To use a building metaphor, if you have a shaky foundation and some weak walls, a building (case) is likely to collapse, it is just a question of when."

Miles McKelvy, Orchard's co-conspirator, also claims Slavich is innocent.

McKelvy was released from Wiri prison last December on parole from a 62-month sentence imposed in 2016 for importing drugs and is undergoing radiation treatment for prostate cancer. He regrets being a "greedy bastard", but insists his part in the fraud lay chiefly in selling mortgages to people who shouldn't have had them.

McKelvy believes the police cast their net too wide, and several of the Allsorts cast should never have been prosecuted. In particular, Slavich.

"John is an innocent victim, I am telling you the truth," he says. "I don't know why the police or anyone hasn't looked into this properly to this day."

SUNGMI KIM/STUFF Miles McKelvy regrets his involvement in the Allsorts scam; he hasn't written a mortgage since.

McKelvy says the police never interviewed him over the Hannon and Booth deals and also claims he told Sergeant Eckersley he wanted to talk to him about Orchard and the Slavich charges, and he never responded.

McKelvy was never called to testify at Slavich's trial. The first he knew, he says, was when he ran into Slavich in prison. "If I had been put in as a witness, I could have done a lot to help him," he says. "He didn't do it, he didn't do anything, he had nothing to gain from it at all. I'm a rogue, OK, but John has done a lot for his community and he doesn't deserve this. He's a straight-up guy."

Eckersley is no longer a serving police officer, and when I talk to him, he's polite, but says he doesn't want to dig up a case where he'd no longer be able to remember precise details. He has no doubts of Slavich's guilt, though.

In an interview shortly after the trial, Eckersley said: "A lot of them thought what they were doing was sharp commercial practice. What Allsorts did was expose it as dishonesty."

HOW SLAVICH'S LIFE WENT TO RUINS

None of the Allsorts defendants were acquitted. Orchard served eight years and three months, thanks to his lack of remorse and intent to reoffend; McKelvy was sentenced to eight; the rest received a mixture of jail terms, community service, and discharges without conviction.

Slavich was found guilty on seven counts, sentenced to 27 months' jail and ordered to pay $60,000 in reparations.

"On the day I went to hear the verdict, I had my car keys in my pocket. I thought, 'There is no way he can find me guilty: how can he find me guilty, he has heard Orchard's evidence.' I was dumbfounded."

ABIGAIL DOUGHERTY/STUFF Slavich uses the pseudonym "John Watson" because he's acutely aware of reactions to his actual name.

He was released in 2008 and his life rapidly unravelled. His wife left him; the settlement cost him all his cash and his bach. Inevitably, he left the accountancy partnership, initially working independently from the same office, but his heart was no longer in it. He was bankrupted.

He became the in-house accountant for a screenprinting company he part-owned; that too went sour. He bankrupted himself again over an internal family feud over his trusteeship of the family trust of his late brother, Steven, murdered in a random attack in Paeroa in 1991.

He ended up living with his daughter in Manurewa, south Auckland, where he funded a legal fight against a neighbour's sleepout. They lost again, he says ruefully, and he was heavily criticised by the judge for a letter-writing campaign he conducted under the name John Watson. He says he uses Watson wherever he can, because mention of his real name means one thing: "Fraudster."

In prison, Slavich had begun to construct an appeal, but for various reasons, didn't get it to court until after his release. It was declined, the first setback in a long series of rebuffs from various courts. After that, he began to represent himself in his cases.

At the Court of Appeal, Slavich argued the missing Gibbs transcript wasn't considered by the judge in reaching his verdict, yet despite the defence's opposition, her unsigned statement was.

Affidavits from his lawyers said the transcript wasn't in the file, and was crucial to his defence. But the Crown Prosecutor, Ross Douch, testified otherwise, and the judgment itself seems to sidestep the key issue. In response, Slavich tried four times to force them to recall the decision.

He then appealed to the Supreme Court, which again didn't rule on the transcript issue, and rejected a new argument, that Slavich's lawyer McIvor had made a so-called "radical" mistake by asking for the trial to be halted when Orchard appeared without being deposed. So Slavich made six recall applications on that decision. Then he brought criminal charges against Douch – seven times receiving permission from the District Court, before the Solicitor-General stayed the prosecutions.

Then action against the Attorney-General, then three different applications for a pardon. Along the way, he was declared vexatious, the courts saying Slavich had no grounds for arguing Douch had acted criminally, and everyone else was protecting him. Undeterred, this month he'll try a new tack in the Court of Appeal related to his "vexatious litigant" status. He believes the system is colluding to cover up its original mistakes.

His third pardon application to the Governor-General remains outstanding. Such applications are referred for advice to the Minister of Justice, and Slavich's has sat with Andrew Little's office since January 2019. In a statement, Little said he would not prejudge his decision, and expected advice from officials "in a matter of weeks to months", a delay attributed to the lengthy correspondence between Slavich and officials.

Is Slavich guilty? There are clearly problems with his conviction. And it was a nonsensical crime for him to commit. The money was never going to be repaid: for the main conspirators, with their names nowhere near the paperwork, there was a chance of getting away with it. But Slavich, who presented the deals in his own name, was bound to be caught. And all he made was $500 in fees. Why would a wealthy man bother?

ABIGAIL DOUGHERTY/STUFF Slavich now lives with his daughter and grandchildren in south Auckland.

What would a pardon mean to him? "That I am not a criminal."

"I love fighting," Slavich says. "But you know, I always know I am right. How do I know I am right? Because everyone else always has to lie about the facts. If you don't lie about the facts, you have to agree with me."