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An Upper Hutt man has been jailed for nearly four years after fraudulently obtaining more than $80,000 in Covid business support loans. Shane Douglas McNally appeared for sentencing at the Porirua District Court last week, after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing. He was sentenced on 68 charges, 21 of which were Inland Revenue charges involving fraud against the government's Small Business Cashflow Scheme (SBCS), which was set up in 2020 to support business affected by the pandemic.
The IRD charges related to McNally and his co-accused, Brendan Blair McBride, who made 21 applications using different identities each time. They sought $224,200 and received nearly $82,600. The other charges were Ministry of Social Development fraud charges and police charges.
The IRD said it began its investigation in June 2020 and found the pair had made the applications, were both on the unemployment benefit and neither met the criteria for a SBCS loan. "In 2020, McNally and McBride made the applications under 19 separate identities, each of $11,800 and confirmed each time that they met the scheme's criteria, including that they had a viable business and had experienced a more than 30 percent decline in revenue," IRD said. McNally was sentenced to three years and 11 months in prison, while co-offender McBride was sentenced in 2021 on SBCS fraud charges and again earlier this year on income tax and police charges.
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