Halfwit bloggers & the infamous hard drive; damning new evidence surfaces.

On March 8th LF posted a story detailing the sudden emergence of a new ‘whistle-blowing’ website “open Justice”. In the minutes following its posting someone commenting under the nom de guerre “Mike C” posted a somewhat cryptic comment:

What this comment seemed to imply was that Ben Rachinger was perhaps the party responsible for creating and uploading material to this new “open justice” website and that blogger Pete George may have been aware of it. LF’s inquiries are still ongoing in this regard.

The aforementioned comment also made reference to a Pete George “world first”, which we naturally took to mean that this more often than not unhinged political blogger had produced some sort of story detailing the emergence of the website.

Soon after Mike C’s effort another anonymous comment was posted, this time providing the url link to a story on Pete George’s “YourNZ” blog. The story was entitled – ‘‘Open Justice’ is closed and dangerous.

Among the comments on that particular story were several that indicated, at least to us, that the article Pete George had posted might have been “stage managed”; that Georges intention had been to create the impression that team LF had been responsible for this new site; a likelihood that we had in any event already envisaged before reading Georges post (see; Another Whistleblower, Anti Corruption & Justice Website Screams G’Day New Zealand!)

In another stranger than fiction twist however, among the material that has now been uploaded to the open justice website, there are documents that post-date the files contained on the now infamous hard drive, in other words, files that we here at LF have never seen before.

Among these documents are letters and emails that purport to have been sent by Matthew Blomfield himself to various parties much earlier than Blomfield’s interaction with Lynn Prentice and various other bloggers and media that Blomfield used to convince these idiots that he had been the victim.

These various media outlets have pretty much repeated the same mantra over and over again during the past 3 years or so, that Blomfield had been the victim of a crime; Blomfield’s personal favourite being the mysterious burglary hypothesis.

In fact, the most recent incident, wherein this myth was dragged out of the closet to be aired, for the purpose of again smearing Cameron Slater, can be found in yet another post that was also, “ostensibly”, penned by blogger Pete George (see: Hager and Whale Hypocrisy).

George posted this piece on the 18th March. At first seemed to be about the Nicky Hager case and the police being forced to destroy the clones they had made of the equipment seized during a search of Hager’s home.

True to form however Pete George, or whoever actually wrote the post, quickly managed to turn the article into a personal attack on blogger Cameron Slater.

Interestingly this post also included excerpts from Judge Raynor Asher’s judgement, specifically where Asher concluded that the hard drive had been unlawfully obtained. The paragraph in question reads:

[134] In the ordinary course of events persons do not legitimately come by the personal hard-drive and filing cabinets of other persons. Even if Mr Slater was not party to any illegality, it seems likely that the information was obtained illegally by the sources, and this diminishes the importance of protecting the source.

There is less public interest in encouraging persons who are in a private dispute with others from going to the media with unlawfully obtained confidential material to hurt them.

This material prima facie is in that category. This is a factor which supports a public interest in disclosure, and that further diminishes the public interest in protecting the source.

Source: http://www.thepaepae.com/wp-uploads/2014/09/CIV-2013-404-005218.pdf

Of course Pete George in this particular post promoted the same old spin, accusing Slater of having come by the information unlawfully, in doing so thinking that he was safe, all because the allegation is referred to in Asher’s judgement; specifically at paragraph [133];

[133] Mr Blomfield alleges that his filing drawers and hard-drive were stolen. This issue has not been addressed by Mr Slater in any detail. He confirms he had these items in his possession, but denies that they were stolen.

 While Mr Slater denies having been party to the unlawful taking of the hard-drive and other materials, he offers no detail.

Source: http://www.thepaepae.com/wp-uploads/2014/09/CIV-2013-404-005218.pdf

What has subsequently become of even more interest is the fact the Pete George has in the past few days edited that post.

For some inexplicable reason George has removed Asher’s musings (paragraph 133), the circumstances under which the hard drive might have been unlawfully obtained. We will however deal with Pete George’s recent edits a little later.

As far back as early December 2013 Lynn Prentice, the owner of Labour party blog, ‘The Standard’, had posted a piece, some of which he claimed had been prepared and supplied by Matthew Blomfield himself.

In that post entitled “When the Wolf Cries Boy” Blomfield implored the Standards readers to believe his sob story over that of Cameron Slater’s account of events, that a hard drive that Slater had obtained had been stolen, and that Slater had used material on this “stolen” hard drive to produce his posts in 2012. Starting at paragraph 4 Matthew Blomfield opines:

In the midst of all of my troubles, there was in 2010, a burglary at the office I shared with a business associate. I believed my hard drive was taken, by who I don’t know. The statement I gave to the police says

“What was originally taken and what ended up in the storage container [a shipping container owned by my associate] I will never know. I can categorically say that a whole lot of boxes with my files and my stuff went missing and my mountain bike and other stuff went missing when the burglary happened.”

A number of reasons have been offered up for why Slater has the drive. I’m not sure what is true, but the discovery I seek will answer that question. The fact remains, it was stolen, by friend or foe, and the information was accessed illegally. The law is very clear on that (storage and stored data are defined as a computer system). It doesn’t matter how Slater got it. My associate later left the company I was working for in the face of a very significant dispute with the other main shareholders, of whom I was not one. I certainly believed that I had been let down by him and said so. It was the end of a very close friendship as well.

Source: http://thestandard.org.nz/when-the-wolf-cries-boy/

Now these two paragraphs, allegedly written by Blomfield, set out in essence what he has relied on for more than three years now, in various court documents, including police complaints, statements, viva voce testimony and affidavits; that being that the hard drive had definitely been stolen and that he had no knowledge and could only guess at how or by whom.

In fact Lynn Prentice, among many others, has repeated this falsehood ad nauseam, as have journalists David Fisher and Matt Nippert, to name but two of the msm journo’s ( See: It’s not stolen, I just borrowed it without asking and Police review complaint against Whale Oil blogger)

Bloggers such as Pete George, Lynn Prentice, Greg Presland, Martyn Bradbury, Peter Aranyi, Matthew Dentith, Ben Rachinger, to name but a few, have all been a party to this continuing smear and the resultant miscarriage of justice that Blomfield’s aggrieved victims have had to endure, all because of a handful of politically motivated bloggers with a personal loathing of Cameron Slater.

LF on the other hand have consistently held the view that all of the available evidence pointed to Slater having been given the hard drive quite legally by a person who was more than entitled to possess it.

The police too, after more than two investigations, have held the same, that the hard drive was never stolen.

Not withstanding the police findings following a review Blomfield had himself pushed for with an IPCA complaint Blomfield then ignored what was more than obvious on the facts and subsequently managed to convince High Court Justice Raynor Asher, using perjury, that the hard drive in question had been stolen; a finding that was completely at odds with the evidence that Slater had attempted to present at the hearing, a right that was blatantly crapped on by Asher under the strangest of circumstances, farcical in fact.

Of course David Fisher, despite having been given a copy of the IPCA report by Slater during the proceeding, then also ignored the IPCA findings gleefully preferring to push Asher’s findings in more than one of the seriously biased reports that appeared in the New Zealand Herald

In the example below, dated October 9^{th 2014}, one see’s exactly the same paragraph used by Fisher as that which was used in Pete George’s post a week ago:

“In the ordinary course of events persons do not legitimately come by the personal hard-drive and filing cabinets of other persons. “Even if Mr Slater was not party to any illegality, it seems likely that the information was obtained illegally by the sources, and this diminishes the importance of protecting the source.”

Justice Asher said there was an even lower public interest “in encouraging persons who are in a private dispute with others from going to the media with unlawfully obtained confidential material to hurt them”.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11339946

With Fisher pulling a quote from another of Asher’s paragraphs, to add further credence to the judges musings;

“This material prima facie is in that category.”

As aforesaid we here at LF have always held that Slater and his sources were handed the hard drive in a perfectly legal fashion, and we stand by that finding. On various occasions we have in fact described in great detail the circumstances under which the hard drive had been given to Slater.

LF have also gone to considerable effort in a number of dedicated posts to debunk Blomfield’s claim that the hard drive had been stolen during a burglary, including dissecting and discrediting various police statements Blomfield has given police alleging burglary. Which of course had been the only legitimate basis for Blomfield police complaint, a complaint, through which, it is important to remember, Blomfield had hoped to have Slater and others charged with crimes; a police complaint which has had many incarnations and interpretations under the baton of master con man Matthew Blomfield.

Now it’s important to remember that Blomfield has to this day sought to maintain that the hard drive was stolen, there has been no backing away from that position whatsoever.

It is in fact this precise circumstance that now leads us to hold the strong suspicion that Matthew Blomfield was in fact the real author of Pete George’s post “Hager, and Whale Hypocrisy”.

Moreover, we also now believe that it was Blomfield who had organized for Pete George to subsequently edit the post, removing the theft allegation and the all important excerpts from Asher’s decision.

We hold this suspicion principally because, on the face of it, there is no plausible reason for George to have made such substantial changes and redaction to the post, including the removing of comments. So to, we doubt very much that the myriad of documents uploaded to the new website “Open Justice” would mean very much to Pete George. That aside George was clearly concerned the team LF would smell a rat when he posted this little piece, ‘Mike C and LF’, just before he banned the woman behind that alter ego from commenting on his blog

In fact with allegedly over 57’000 files having been uploaded, we doubt that Mr George would have even known where to begin with a search, it took team LF many weeks to get to grips with the intricacies of Blomfield’s many nefarious business dealings, only a fraction of which have been presented by LF.

Matthew Blomfield on the other hand would have known exactly what each of the 57’000 files contained, just by glancing at the file names.

We here at LF hold that Blomfield, after searching the data on open justice, recognized one document in particular and knew immediately that it presented a serious problem for him, it was proof of his own High Court perjury.

It’s not a problem that would have even crossed Pete George’s extremely feeble mind, and Frankly, there is no other credible explanation for Pete George having made the substantial alterations of his own accord.

The ‘smoking gun’ so to speak is an email dated 24th January 2013, a document that seems irrefutable evidence of Blomfield’s guilt; that the oft-repeated claim that the hard drive had been stolen can now be proven beyond any doubt whatsoever to have been wholly false, knowingly false.

Team LF have been handed the file, a comprehensive letter, sent via email, to the directors of Hell Systems Limited. A document which had been obtained from the tranche of material uploaded to the “Open Justice” website two weeks ago.

It’s a letter that Blomfield sent a full 11 months prior to penning his piece “When the Wolf Cries Boy” for The Standard to publish on December 6^th 2013. Blomfield opined:

Subject: PRIVACY BREACH NOTIFICATION HELL SYSTEMS LIMITED

From: “Matt Blomfield” <matt@blomfield.co.nz>

Date: 24/01/13 18:06

To: ‘stu’; ‘Callum Davies’

Dear Stu and Callum

Further to my phone call and the recent stories on the Whale Oil website I would like to make you aware of an issue relating to the privacy of your customer database and other information.

Background

In late 2004 a company for which I was a director was engaged to work as consultants on various projects relating to the Hell Pizza brand. As a result of that work I was given a number of confidential documents including copies of the customer database.

Information about the incident

1. It has come to my attention that the hard drive that contained your information was give to Mr Cameron Slater who is the author and owner/administrator of the website Whale Oil www.whaleoil.co.nz.

2. That, by Mr Slater’s own admission, Mr Slater has in his possession the portable hard drive (hard drive) containing 28Gb of emails, a database of electronic files, multiple electronic copies of financial database systems and a four-draw filing cabinet of physical files (filing cabinet), all of which relate to the affairs of the My clients and I, the data covers an eleven year period between 2000 and 2010.

3. The hard drive was given to Mr Slater by [redacted] owner and director of [redacted] Limited. Mr [redacted] obtained the drive without my knowledge or approval during my employment with him.

4. To the best of my knowledge copies are with Mr Cameron Slater, [redacted], Mr Mark Spring owner of Trinity Media and [redacted]

What I have done to control and reduce the harm

1. The hard drive was given to the Serious Fraud Office by Mr Slater at the end of July 2012. The Serious Fraud Office confirmed in writing that they would not be commencing an investigation into your (Mr Slater’s) complaint. The drive was then sent to the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment by the Serious Fraud Office. As soon as I was made aware of the fact that they had this hard drive I applied to the High Court for its return amongst other things. On 7 December Judge Fare confirmed recent of and undertaking dealing with this matter. The undertaking to the High Court provides for the drive to be returned on or before 1 February 2013.

2. On the 12/05/2012 I reported the matter to the Northshore branch of the NZ Police and the file was investigated by Constable Martin Guest. Mr Guest decided that this matter was not one for the Police and suggested I contact the Privacy Commissioner. I then contacted the IPCA and they have written to me on the 11th of January 2013 to say that the criminal investigation will now be re opened.

3. On the 30/08/12 I reported the matter to the office of the Privacy Commissioner. They have completed initial investigations and on 7 December 2012 I was notified that they will be contacting [redacted]. The notification letter sent to me by the office of the Privacy Commissioner states Based on the information I have now notified [redacted] of your compliant and the potential issues it raises under principles 1-4 and 11 of the Privacy Act.

4. The office of the Privacy Commissioner has knowledge of this Privacy Breach Notification letter.

5. To the best of my knowledge, Mr Cameron Slater, [redacted], Mr Mark Spring and [redacted] still have copies of the hard drive and I am currently investigating legal option over and above the work with the Privacy Commissioner.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact me directly. You can also contact the Privacy Commissioner. The file number is C/24778. Contact details are as follows:

Website: www.privacy.org.nz

Phone: 0800 803 909

Post: PO Box 10-094, The Terrace, Wellington 6143.

I apologies for any inconvenience this may cause your organisation and will assist in any way possible.

 

Kind Regards

Matt

Matt Blomfield

As already stated the email above was sent 11 months prior to Lynn Prentice posting his first story, When the Wolf Cries Boy, excerpt above, extolling Blomfield’s virtue and honesty, and LF would argue, knowingly and maliciously promoting the false allegation that Slater had been a party to a crime.

This letter also sheds plenty of much-needed light on the real reasons behind Blomfield’s defamation litigation, the many outrageous lies, the desire to gag all of his victims using the threat of either bankruptcy or litigation.

This may well have been a successful strategy had it not been for one unforeseen little hurdle – Lauda Finem.

As for kiwi blogger Pete George, and a few others who have toyed with justice, it seems to us that they may have all missed the second Elephant in the room. Quite how they could have missed it defies explanation. The fact is this second Elephant is considerably larger than the one these people had all wanted brought down.

It’s a beast that’s now a hell of a lot angrier, having been poked and prodded for the amusement of a handful of spiteful arse-holes (see; photos above), who despite LF’s repeated warnings, decided that it was safe, reasonable, not unconscionable, in fact fair game, to engage in the perversion of justice, whilst in pursuit of Cameron Slater.

This Elephant of course serves as the metaphor for Blomfield’s many victims, who now have their eyes firmly focused on the bloggers who have mocked them, toyed with their livelihoods, savings and inalienable right to justice.

Bibliography/Reference

http://yournz.org/2016/03/18/hager-and-whale-hypocrisy/

http://yournz.org/2016/03/15/mike-c-and-lf/

http://www.thepaepae.com/wp-uploads/2014/09/CIV-2013-404-005218.pdf

http://www.laudafinem.org/2016/03/08/another-whistleblower-anti-corrruption-justice-website-screams-gday-new-zealand/

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11339946

http://thestandard.org.nz/tag/matthew-blomfield/

http://thestandard.org.nz/when-the-wolf-cries-boy/

http://thestandard.org.nz/its-not-stolen-i-just-borrowed-it-without-asking/