Police alerted after woman tried to deposit supermarket shopping bag full of cash

When a woman carried a supermarket shopping bag filled with cash into a bank, a teller's suspicions were raised.

They were raised further when the woman didn't know how much cash was in the bag, but thought it was "about $170,000".

And they were raised even more when the cash was found to have an unusual odour and bearing signs of dirt.

The woman carrying that bag was Tracey Snook, described by Justice Rebecca Ellis in a just-released ruling as a "naive and highly susceptible woman" who came under the influence of a gang member and subsequently was embroiled in "a world of grief"

In that judgement Justice Ellis ordered more than $109,000 in Snook's bank accounts be forfeited to the Crown.

It details how Snook went to the Porirua branch of Westpac in June 2015, claiming a mortgage broker advised her to deposit the cash in a bank.

She told the teller the cash came from the sale of her Tawa, Wellington, house.

The bank refused to take it unless Snook could produce a sale and purchase agreement. She couldn't and after she left, bank staff alerted police.​

From that day on Snook made numerous cash deposits just under $10,000, the largest sum that can be deposited without activating reporting requirements. 

She put them into her bank account, and the accounts of her son Jayde Snook and his partner Sarah Colledge. 

According to the court judgement the cash actually came from former senior Porirua Mongrel Mob leader Steven Blance, who Snook met through her partner.

In June Blance was jailed for 14½ years for running a sophisticated methamphetamine operation from his Housing NZ flat in Linden, near Snook's house.

The police investigation into Blance revealed he agreed to buy Snook's house for about $260,000, and that he paid her in lump sum cash payments of $30,000.

Snook bought drugs from Blance and knew the cash came from the proceeds of the drug operation.

The Tawa house, deemed to be owned by Blance, was seized by police and sold for $325,000. That sum is now the subject of a separate forfeiture order.

This year police applied to the High Court for forfeiture of $109,154.87 in Tracey Snook's bank accounts, $24,951.51 in Jayde Snook's bank account, and all interests in a $410,000 Titahi Bay property owned by he and Colledge.

Justice Rebecca Ellis was told that while no charges were laid against the trio, police believed their actions amounted to money laundering.

Snook opposed the application on the basis she had not been charged, and because the money she received was for the purchase of her house, and she received no benefit from it.

But in a decision released on Friday Justice Ellis ruled criminal proceedings were not necessary for a forfeiture order to be made. All that had to be proved was that the property was "tainted" by being acquired as a result of significant criminal activity.

She said Blance bought the house with tainted cash and that it was a form of money laundering because Snook knew or should have known the cash was the proceeds of crime.

Justice Ellis said Tracey Snook was a "naive and highly susceptible woman" who came under the influence of Blance, and entered a transaction that caused her "a world of grief", as it left her without a home and no better off now than she was.

She said Jayde and Colledge misled a bank in order to get a mortgage for the Titahi Bay property, by saying they had been gifted the deposit from a relative. While police said this meant they had unlawfully benefited from criminal activity and that the property should be forfeited, the judge disagreed.

The judge said it would be "beyond the pale" to order the couple, aged in their twenties, to repay the full value of the house.

Her final orders were for the forfeiture of the cash in the bank accounts and all interests in the Titahi Bay property, apart from the amount still owed to the bank in mortgage, and the $25,000 in Kiwisaver funds Jayde had used to buy it. (via Stuff)