Victims of a fraudster, who spent their money funding his extravagant lifestyle, will get about 60 cents back for every dollar stolen from them.
Steven Robertson was sentenced im 2019 to six years and eight months in prison, with a minimum non-parole period of three years and four months. Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith
Steven Robertson stole $1.2 million and roughly $AU270,000 between 2009 and 2015 while operating several companies that sold software that purported to help people trade.
The software was not easy to use and when confronted with disgruntled investors Robertson offered to trade on their behalf.
Instead, he used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle full of cars, helicopter trips, private jets, holidays and jewellery.
He further defrauded his victims by inviting them to become "shareholders" in his companies and when the money ran out he simply stole money out of clients' credit card accounts.
Last year he was jailed for the crimes.
The repayment method was approved by the High Court this week, and supported by the Financial Markets Authority as being in the best interests of the victims.
Separately, Rodney McCall, also known as Rodney Crichton, was yesterday sentenced to 12 months' home detention for similar offending, although the offending was not connected to Robertson's, it was similar.
He was ordered to repay victims $70,000.
FMA general counsel Nick Kynoch said it was good news the victims would get some of their money back.
"Victims of Robertson and McCall had their trust abused and many were plunged into financial uncertainty as a result, some fearing for their retirement prospects. Mr McCall's sentence reflects the consequences for continuing [Robertson's] scam.
"He reinvented the scam through a new entity, despite being aware of the FMA's investigation into PTT and Mr Robertson. This allowed him to continue to target mainly elderly people solely for his own personal gain, many of whom were re-victimised, having been subject to Mr Robertson's fraud in the first instance."
Kynoch urged investors to take extreme care before investing their money and to always use an FMA-licensed provider.
