Sydney AUS - She stole $7.6m to be happy - but it all ended in tears
JonesieCat
JC
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0110/27/national/national1.html
She stole $7.6m to be happy - but it all ended in tears
The high life ... Heather Power and Chriss Smith in New Zealand. Despite
the smiles, she was beginning to have doubts about him.
Heather Power's apparently routine life hid a $7.6million secret, Deborah
Cameron writes.
Heather Power is not Ned Kelly nor Robin Hood, but she stole $7.6 million
and lived a double life so brazen that it is a wonder she was not caught
long ago.
The scale of it remains astonishing. She bought a BMW, leased a harbour
apartment, drank vintage champagne, hired stretch limousines, accumulated
diamonds, sat proud at fine restaurants and swept past others in a puff of
limited-edition Thierry Mugler perfume.
She was feted by Sydney's finest stores and boutiques, and received
invitations to their special events.
On one spree she says that she bought an 18-carat diamond-encrusted leopard
brooch straight out of the Cartier boutique's window. Her husband, Mark, was
not to know: he thought she was at calligraphy classes. In her personal
photographs of the time she looks like someone on a glamorous honeymoon -
always happy and affectionate - and often with a raised champagne flute.
The man in the picture is Chriss Smith, a jewellery salesman, who says they
had a business relationship, nothing more. Another face in her personal
photographs is James Stein, Mr Smith's former boss. Power, 45, first met the
pair at Martin & Stein Antiques, a jewellery store in the Queen Victoria
Building, in late 1996. Within three years she would become their best
customer.
The puzzle that confronted Judge Megan Latham in the District Court
yesterday was how to punish her. Was three years enough or should the
sentence be much sterner?
Judge Latham said the Court of Appeal had described as woefully insufficient
a three-year minimum sentence set in an earlier much less serious case. The
maximum jail term is 10 years. "I've not seen another case of this magnitude
come before the court except for solicitors' trust account and stockbroker
swindles," Judge Latham said. She adjourned the sentencing until Monday.
For sheer size there is nothing to compare with Power's spree or the way it
was financed with money stolen with remarkable ease from the National
Australia Bank. Although Power was only a mid-ranking loans officer at the
Seven Hills branch and later Blacktown, she wrote fake overdraft
applications, nominated false assets to secure them and had them approved by
a computer. She drew bank cheques that were countersigned by overworked and
unwitting colleagues.
Double checks were never made by managers, bank auditors did not spot the
thefts and apparently no-one ever queried the brand new BMW she started
driving to the office.
She was caught only when a computer in the bank's Melbourne office sounded
an alert because the address on several files was an apartment that she
secretly leased in Kirribilli. That was last October, and by then there were
39 separate loans.
During her last week of freedom, Power agreed to speak to the Herald. With
her retriever, Goldie, stretched out beside her thonged feet, and a friendly
magpie tapping for a morning snack at the patio door, she talked about her
fears of what lay ahead. The only thing she wanted before jail was an outing
to Taronga Zoo.
Her husband, Mark, also a banker with the NAB but not implicated in the
thefts, had taken four days off work. He sat across from her on a sofa that
was covered in regency striped velvet. In his hands was a ring-binder of
neatly organised court papers. There were two well-worn tan easy chairs with
squashy pouffes in front of the TV. A well-dusted collection of Lladro
porcelain figurines sat in a display cabinet and on top of the piano.
"And that's Heather's 25-year service clock from the bank," Mr Power said,
pointing out a gold-trimmed mantel clock on the bookshelf. Barely two years
since the clock was presented, his wife was in disgrace.
So why did she do it? And how?
Through occasional tears what emerged was the story of a lonely woman
miserable at work and in a shaky marriage. What on the surface was an
audacious theft was for her a huge fling at happiness.
When she and Mr Smith were together in the jewellery shop, she said, he
would sometimes say that he had "turned me from a boring suburban housewife
into someone who was dynamic and fun and glamorous. He took credit for doing
that."
For a crime with a staggering amount of money at its heart, that was not
really Power's motive. The shopping sprees - especially at the jewellers -
came complete with laughter, compliments, champagne, nights at the opera and
an attentive social circle.
"They built me up. I'd walk in on Thursday evening and they would always
compliment me on my hair or my make-up or what I was wearing. They always
complimented me. It was made to be real fun ... and I got swept along with
it."
Mr Smith and Mr Stein took her to dinner at fashionable haunts such as MG
Garage and to Mr Stein's country retreat at Mt Wilson.
They knew that she worked at the bank: she organised Mr Smith's home loan
and banked his pay cheques.
When everything was finally uncovered, she had told her husband: "But I'm
not a bad person.''
They had been been married for 20 years, had no children and had drifted
apart for the same reasons that ruin marriages everywhere: too much work and
too little talk. Things were very brittle between them, and during the
Olympics she announced she had met someone else and wanted a divorce. She
drove off and stayed away for three days.
The "someone else" was Mr Smith but the idea that their close friendship
might become a sexual relationship was apparently a part of her fantasy,
too. She misunderstood the entwined wine glasses, the holidays together and
his attentiveness. She loved him, but he was not interested.
In photographs of a trip they took last year to New Zealand she sparkles.
But the shot of them smiling in front of a gleaming black helicopter masks
her first doubts about Mr Smith. Chartering the helicopter was his idea, she
said. She had assumed he would pay, but after he signed up for the ride he
told her that his credit card was fully extended.
"That was the first time I thought that I was being sponged on ... I was
there to write the cheques."
Power grew up in a family of four and was closest to her father. His death
in 1996 triggered an episode of depression that worried her husband enough
that he raised it with the family doctor. But she never sought medical help.
She was an A-grade netball umpire, a piano teacher and a scorer with the
local baseball team. But mainly she worked at the bank and moved to
different branches as her husband's career went ahead. When, for example, he
was transferred from Queanbeyan to Sydney, she moved, too, and ended up
unhappily at Seven Hills, a branch where normal stresses were aggravated by
two armed robberies. The bank sent in counsellors but Power had customers in
her office. "The counsellor was upstairs in the lunchroom, but I didn't even
sit down with her; I stood."
Four days later, on a Sunday, she had an inkling of a double life, she said.
She drove to the city because she did not want to be alone at home, and
ended up at Martin & Stein. A psychiatric report for the court traced her
double life to a mental disorder that began when, as a child of 7, she was
almost abducted by a stranger from a park.
Her fantasy role as a wealthy woman on the loose in Sydney overtook her
almost four years ago, she said. It was a Thursday, the night of her weekly
calligraphy lesson, and she skipped it and went back to Martin & Stein. It
became regular. Usually while drinking champagne she looked at jewellery and
put pieces aside on lay-by. Her first purchase was a gold chain. Four years
later, when the police arrived with a search warrant, the collection
contained more than 200 pieces and was considered so extraordinary that it
was auctioned by Christies. One piece was valued at almost $200,000. But
Power hardly wore any of it.
Most of the jewellery was kept by James Stein locked in the shop's safe not
only because it was valuable but also because it was a secret to be kept
from her husband. Sometimes she would ask to see certain things, but that
was as close as she got. Mr Smith always selected what she would wear when
they went out and often took it off her at the end of the evening, she said.
"I never saw all that jewellery together. I couldn't even remember half of
what was there.''
Meanwhile, around town, other bees found the honeypot. Retailers big and
small got to know her. On the arm of Mr Smith, who was her virtual style
consultant, she even upgraded her toaster and kettle from plastic and tin
types to more chic polished chrome. He had a makeover done at the Yves Saint
Laurent counter at David Jones.
He decorated the apartment in Kirribilli and had his own key. The
extravagance of it contrasted with her modest life in suburban North Rocks.
Detectives were drawn into the puzzle of how she kept the two apart.
As improbable as her explanations were - that the BMW was a gift from a
customer - her husband was silent. He told her to square it with her area
manager and left it at that.
Finally confronted by the bank and police, she confessed. She pleaded guilty
in June and is co-operating with the NAB as it tries to recover the money.
It has retrieved about $2 million, and is suing Mr Smith and Mr Stein for
what remains outstanding from the jewellery sales.