Vainuupo Paul Sulusulu was sentenced in the Manukau District Court on Tuesday. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
A man cheated Chorus out of more than $42,000 by booking skip bins from a waste management company and charging them to the fibre broadband installer.
Vainuupo Paul Sulusulu, 33, profited from hundreds of fraudulent orders even though he has never worked at either company.
His offending was "sophisticated, repetitive and prolonged", Judge Nick Webby said when Sulusulu was sentenced at Manukau District Court to home detention on Tuesday.
Sulusulu used a false identity for two years to offer the bins for hire on Facebook Marketplace and pocketed the payments.
According to a court summary, Chorus hires skip bins from Waste Management for the disposal of fibre optic cables.
Bookings are made over email and paid when Waste Management emails through a statement and invoice.
In June 2020, a Waste Management staff member noticed Sulusulu's Facebook post offering skip bins for hire at $280 each.
It drew the staffer's attention because the bin pictured was in Waste Management colours of red and yellow.
He contacted Sulusulu and booked a bin for a random address in Papakura, then checked the internal Waste Management booking system and found a bin had been arranged to be delivered to the same address.
After the bin was delivered, Sulusulu sent messages to the staffer asking for payment to a BNZ account in his own name.
An investigation found Waste Management had been receiving calls from a man called Patrick who made up to nine skip bin bookings a day on the Chorus Auckland account casual rate.
The man spoke to multiple client service representatives to make the bookings.
Chorus was billed for at least 333 such orders between 2018 and 2020 totalling $42,790.
Judge Webby said Sulusulu also posed as a Waste Management employee on occasion, wore its uniform and drove a vehicle with the company logo.
His offending was clearly motivated by financial gain and the loss suffered by Chorus was significant, the judge said.
Sulusulu also had 20 convictions for theft and was serving a community sentence when he offended - aggravating factors that added to his sentence.
He was, however, given discounts for his remorse and guilty plea and was assessed as being at low risk of reoffending.
Judge Webby sentenced him to 10 months of home detention and ordered reparations of $13,000 to be paid over a two-year period.
*This story was originally published on New Zealand Herald.