NZ News
Auckland woman Chrystal Hoeta sentenced for spate of medical centre burglaries
A victim in a spate of medical centre burglaries is mourning the loss of her “irreplaceable” stolen handbag, given to her by her late mother.
“Losing that was the hardest thing,” she said in her victim impact statement, read in the Manukau District Court.
The woman spoke of the lengths she had gone to recover the bag, including making a public appeal, as it also contained items essential to the care of a high-needs child in her care.
One of the thieves, Chrystal Hoeta, was in court this week for stealing the woman’s belongings, and those of others, during a run of four medical centre burglaries between 2024 and 2025.
According to the agreed summary of facts, the first burglary was carried out by Hoeta and her co-offender, Layce Atutolu.
Atutolu was sentenced to 12 months’ home detention for her part in the burglaries last October.
On April 18, 2024, Hoeta, 24, and Atutolu walked into the Ōtara Family and Christian Health Centre in South Auckland.
Their first victim worked at the centre and had left her handbag, containing her wallet and prescription glasses, and a laptop bag in her office.
The pair quietly moved through the centre, and Hoeta picked up the victim’s laptop, while Atutolu took her handbag.
Then, in January of 2025, the pair were shown on CCTV entering the reception area of Pukekohe Family Health Care in South Auckland.
A worker there had left his belongings, including his wallet and keys, in his office while he went out for lunch.
Hoeta and Atutolu went into his office and stole those items.
They were challenged by another staff member about being in the office but claimed they were waiting for their aunt, before leaving the centre.
Two months later, they went into TBI Health Physiotherapy, Sports and Spinal Rehabilitation Clinic in Flat Bush, South Auckland.
While the victim was treating a patient on the other side of the clinic, she left her bag unattended at the reception.
Hoeta and Atutolu sat in the waiting room for a short period and paced around the reception area.
Atutolu pushed an empty pram behind the reception desk, followed by Hoeta, who was holding a baby.
Hoeta stood by at the reception entrance while Atutolu put the victim’s bag in the empty pram and closed its cover.
They were seen on CCTV footage leaving the building.
Then, a month later, the fourth victim was working at the Psychology Group in South Auckland when she left her bag unattended.
The man was sentenced at the Manukau District Court on 33 charges of sexual assault. Photo: NZME
It contained her laptop, and work and personal phones.
Atutolu stole the bag and left in a car with Hoeta.
An hour later, Hoeta was found by police in Karaka, South Auckland, and arrested. She had the victim’s work phone in her pocket.
The ‘impact’ of the burglaries
In court, Judge Tania Sharkey read out the victim impact statement from the woman at the Psychology Group, whose bag was stolen.
“I think it’s important that you hear about the impact on [the victims],” the judge said.
The victim’s stolen bag was a gift from her mother, who had died, and the victim had been posting “publicly” trying to find it, the court heard.
She was the caregiver of a high needs, neurodivergent child, and without the items in her bag, she was unable to provide the care and support that were part of their “essential” routine, the statement said.
This included being able to log into apps and contact family.
“She hopes you can see the impact your actions have on people’s lives,” the judge reported.
The victim said it sounded like Hoeta needed help, and she wanted her to receive it.
Hoeta’s lawyer, Ish Jayanandan, said there was a connection between her client’s “rather deprived” upbringing and her criminal behaviour.
A psychological report before the court contained a “harrowing outline” of what Hoeta had endured in her childhood, Jayanandan said.
This trauma had carried through into Hoeta’s adult life, she said.
Because of Hoeta’s background, the prosecution and defence were in agreement that a sentence of home detention was appropriate.
Judge Sharkey said before that background information came to light, imprisonment was “really on the cards” for Hoeta.
“I wouldn’t be criticised for that,” the judge warned.
The judge also said she understood Hoeta’s co-offender was a relative and a “bad influence”.
For three charges of burglary and one of receiving stolen property, Hoeta was sentenced to nine months’ home detention and ordered to pay $200 to the victims.
* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.
Source: RNZ
Latest News
Opportunities to mitigate multi-million-dollar RNZ budget blowout likely missed – experts
Multiple opportunities to identify and mitigate a multi-million-dollar budget blowout at RNZ appear have been missed, according to the former executive director at Audit New Zealand.
The public broadcaster on Monday revealed a near $12 million shock financial loss after a litany of financial blunders, which will now lead to sweeping job cuts.
The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.
CEO Paul Thompson took responsibility for the result, and said internal reports gave an inaccurate picture of the finances, meaning the scale of the loss only became clear in October.
RNZ’s former chief financial officer Hilary Parker resigned unexpectedly in early October.
The board said it would commission an independent review into what went wrong.
Independent contractor Stephen Walker, who left the Audit Office earlier this year, said the size of the loss was surprising, as was the length of time it took to identify it – months after the financial year ended.
Supplied / OAG
“Probably more of a concern is that they had seemingly been unaware that they were running up a significant deficit until they were in the preparation stage of their annual report in October.”
Walker said public entities typically produced monthly financial reports.
An interim audit also took place before the end of the financial year, he said, but if the organisation hadn’t identified significant losses at that stage, the auditor could also be in the dark.
“It seems that there’s a real weakness in forecasting and budgeting that’s occurred here and that the monthly accounts, when they’re produced, either haven’t identified these significant variances against budget or the magnitude of them really hasn’t come to light until right towards the end of the financial year,” Walker said.
“And really at that point, there’s no opportunity for the chief executive, the leadership team to take, and the board to take, any corrective action because the year has effectively been completed.”
Walker said the “significant miss” was difficult to account for given it was more than 10 percent of RNZ’s total funding.
He said based on RNZ’s annual report, financial complexity didn’t appear to be a factor.
“This $11.8m loss isn’t made up of one particular item … it seems to have been contributed to by a number of separate expense lines running over budget. So I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with complexity.”
Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget. Staff costs also came in $3.2m over budget, including $1.4m in redundancy payments.
Professor at Auckland University’s business school Norman Wong said based on media reports the issues identified were “significant and troubling”.
Supplied / University of Auckland
“But recognising the sale of land as income in their budget is a basic error that one would have expected to have been caught and corrected well before it got to this point.”
With funding reductions at RNZ over the past two years, Walker expected greater scrutiny of financial results.
“Virtually every public entity has had their annual budget reduced. And so you would expect … the leadership team on a monthly basis and board – I’m not sure how frequently the board will consider the information – but you would expect them to be interrogating the results on a regular basis throughout the year,” he said.
Walker said initiating an independent review was the correct course of action and that he’d want to understand what information the leadership team and the board were regularly receiving.
He said he’d “love to say” surprising financial results were rare, but conceded they occured on a semi-frequent basis during his time leading the Audit Office.
“The benefit of independent scrutiny by the Audit Office – and the auditors providing that support to the Auditor General – [is] that the reporting is fairly presented at the end of the year, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.”
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