Imprisonment for plasterer’s $125k wage subsidy fraud

Deva Brown Phuhathakarn, of Avondale, was sentenced in Waitakere District Court on 15 October after earlier pleading guilty to two representative charges of using a document. 

The charges covered 23 applications Phuhathakarn made under the scheme between March 2020 and March 2021. 

He received $125,103.20 paid into his bank accounts for nine of the applications. 

The other 14 claims worth $33,976.40 were declined. 

Phuhathakarn, who is a plasterer, made the claims under his own name or in the name of his company, Complete Plastering Solutions Limited (CPS). 

The applications were made as either a sole trader or as an employer. Some of the applications included lists of names of full-time employees, none of whom were employed by the business. 

Phuhathakarn filed PAYE returns with Inland Revenue for multiple people named in the wage subsidy applications about the same time he submitted wage subsidy applications. He named those individuals as full-time employees, giving the wage subsidy applications an air of legitimacy. 

Judge Andrée Wiltens noted the offending was deliberate and sustained, and cheated the system. Credit was given for guilty pleas but no other mitigations were found when reaching the final sentence. 

A total of 53 people have been sentenced in wage subsidy cases, and another 51 people are still before the courts as part of MSD’s programme of work on wage subsidy fraud and integrity. Since the scheme started, more than $830 million* in wage subsidies has been repaid. 

For more information about the Wage Subsidy Integrity and Fraud Programme please see here.  

*Figures as at 14 October