The Twixing of Twose, who did the fingering?

Purported New Zealand Herald journo Helen Twose, we’d never heard of her before, has written a very skilful article about nothing. Whats more whilst her article is about nothing it does start with series of rather extraordinary, albeit amusing, lies and then slowly descends into a rather loose with the truth collection of self-masterbatory delusion;

Employee fraud and the price of trust

Think your company is immune from employee fraud? Better think again, investigators tell Helen Twose.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11369006

Ms Twose’s article starts out with all the right intentions, she’s picked a fairly good subject, as is reflected in the title she’d chosen; “Employee fraud and the price of trust”, although having read her piece a far more apt title may have been “News fraud at the expense of trust”

By the time we’d finished reading the first paragraph the title proved to be quite misleading. Obviously we cannot be sure who suggested Ms Twose write the piece, whether it was her own idea or whether the editor had handed it out as an assignment and Ms Twose drew the short straw, but Twose, like so many other half-arsed cranking journos before her has cocked up.

The first paragraph contains a clue, in fact it has a large red flag, a warning that the reader should be very wary of any of Twose’s claims.

“Forget what you’ve seen in the movies, says Daniel Toresen – spotting a liar is extremely difficult.

For 25 years he has worked as a private investigator at the family firm, Thompson & Toresen, specialising in detecting business fraud.” – Helen Twose

The basic tenets of Helen’s article is that she has spoken with all the right people and is now going to educate her readers on “Fraud”, the A – Z of scams and chicanery. But the article is bereft of facts the material used is a fraud, as is perhaps even her claim to having been the author.

Helen’s obvious confusion between fact and fiction lies again in the above paragraph and a few claims that she later attributes to New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office CEO, Australian Julie Read and some obscure bloke by the name of Matthew Hammond, employed by multinational accountancy giant Ernst and Young. The funny thing is that Ernst and Young are probably the ones footing the bill for the story, or perhaps E&Y’s media liaison ex journo Jenni McManus had promised a big slice of their advertising budget if the Herald ran a little teaser. We’ll be detailing the behind the scenes relationships that have led us to that conclusion a little later in the story.

Ms Twose, qoutes so-call Kiwi private investigator and media whore Daniel Toresen who has offered Ms Twose a little of his sage advice on how “Spotting a liar is extremely difficult”, Twose therein making her second mistake, accepting not only Toresen’s opinion as worthwhile, but that he himself is somehow an expert. You see the problem for Twose is that she was quoting a liar, in fact a Pathological liar, albeit a rather good one.

Twose continues, “for twenty five years he has worked as a private investigator for the family firm”. Twose has again been caught out by yet another fib, well actually it’s more than a fib, it’s more in the class of a fucking big lie. Ms Twose clearly had not taken Toresen’s advice seriously for if she had she would have double checked Toresen self-serving claims.

We’ll come to Daniel Toresen’s history a little later in the piece but what is more than obvious in reading the first two sentences is that this is not news, it’s not even editorial, it’s actually advertising, and not particularly well disguised advertising at that.

The Herald has in fact recently adopted a new strategy, one that goes hand in hand with its transition from a respected news source to that of a low rent Murdoch style tabloid. They like to euphemistically call it “partner relationships” but what they are really talking about is manufacturing news that is in line with what their advertisers expect to see. Forget the public, they have nothing to do with this business relationship. The stratagy is all about the advertiser getting bang for buck, and looking good. For the Herald is all about cold hard cash, the very thing the so-called legacy media, especially in the very small and ever shrinking New Zealand market, needs to keep the Wolves from the door and stop their shareholders deserting in droves

For example the Herald two years back entered into a rather lucritive advertising deal with Ray White real estate New Zealand, suddenly the Herald’s news items where all about real estate agents and the brand new Real Estate Agents Authority. The Herald willingly ran a number of smear campaigns that simply defied logic for anyone who was knowledgeable of the facts.

The editors at both the Herald and the Herald on Sunday began changing stories around to please the advertisers, not even facts were immune from the odd convenient modification, with some important detail intenionally altered or omitted altogether.

This latest article, penned by Ms Twose, ranks among the most sickening self-serving pieces of crap that we have so far seen of the Heralds advertorials, adverts masquerading as news.

Just how it was that Twose managed to con the SFO’s Julie Read into commenting we’re not quite sure, but perhaps she sold her on the idea of raising her profile. Although whilst Ms Read is probably not aware, having a high profile in New Zealand is more likely to make you the target of ridicule, in fact you might as well put the noose around your own neck, even when the candidate is deserving of admiration.

“I think most people see me as an unfortunate meat in a very unpleasant sandwich.” – Adam Feeley, 

Perhaps a quite chat to Adam Feeley, her predecessor, would not go amiss, it could save Julie a lot of bother in the future and put her right off nattering to contract Herald Journos the likes of Twose.

Amongst the hodgepodge of Twose’s article she eventually gets around to Julie Read and the Serious Fraud Office;

When a major fraud is uncovered it can come up on the radar of the Serious Fraud Office.

“We don’t actually have a specific monetary threshold,” says SFO chief executive Julie Read.

“Probably we’d think a million dollars is where we’d start but it’s very hard to have a threshold of any kind because the matter can go either way.”

What starts out looking small could potentially balloon, while a case that initially appears to involve multi-million dollar amounts could upon investigation be $500,000, she says.

“The criteria for us is serious or complex.”

“So complex may not be huge, but it may be we’re the people with the right resources to pursue it.” Read says the SFO is happy to hear from anyone who thinks they’ve lost a serious amount of money, and will refer matters on to other agencies if appropriate.

Well of course Julie Read is entitled to her opinion, if it has been used by Twose in context, but that is all it is, Ms Reads self-serving opinion. The reality is that the statements Twose attributes to Read are actually seriously misleading. The SFO are seriously compromised as an investigative body, Twose’s article in fact confirms this.

Stop and think for a moment, what serious or credible anti corruption or fraud policing agency would want it’s CEO to be seen commenting on issues for what is essentially an advertising stunt designed to market Ernst and Young’s latest business venture and the very dodgey Toresen & Thompson Investigations?

The answer is of course none, and had Read even suspected that she was being dupped by Ms Twose and the bean counters at the New Zealand Herald she would have undoubtedly immediately hung up the telephone. Julie Read has an excellent reputation in Australia and she is about to seriously damage that reputation, courtesy of a very greedy publishing house, APNZ.

The fact is that Daniel Toresen in particular is desperate to raise his profile, in a way that conceals his own dark reputation as one of the industries biggest bullshit artists and fraudsters. Regular readers will remember Toresen’s involvement with serial fraudster Matthew John Blomfield and the theft of a $100’000.00 cheque, the proceeds of which Blomfield spent before being bankrupted.

So with Toresen & Co’s criminal history in mind this is where it gets interesting, it’s also where we ask the question, what were the origins of Ms Twose’s piece, exactly who was behind the idea to write the article? Who thought to then sell it to Ernst and Young as a viable public relations stunt?

The answers to those questions call into doubt the very integrity of the New Zealand Herald, corporate high flyers Ernst and Young and of course Twose herself.

To answer those questions one needs to have information that very few Kiwi’s, the Heralds readers for example, have access to; Starting of course with the hidden relationships of the key players.

Right at the centre is, LF believes, the now retired hack Journo Jenni McManus.

McManus has been around the traps in New Zealand since Adam was a boy and left her last job with Fairfax New Zealand under a very dark cloud, with allegations of corruption and collusion with bent police officers thrown in the mix. McManus then sought out another job, one that sits just on the fringe of what a hack journalist can do when not writing crap for the media giants Fairfax, APNZ or either of the two television broadcasters TVNZ and TV3. In fact a lot of bent journo’s eventually wind up doing exactly what McManus now does when their options begin to dwindle.

McManus know heads up none other than Ernst and Young’s public relations department, a little room from which all the corporates media relationships are controlled. For this reason Twose’s story would have most certainly been signed off on by Jenni McManus. If any money changed hands then she would have been in there boots and all pushing for the budget, if the expenditure had not already been allocated.

The vast bulk of Twose’s peice is dedicated to Ernst and Young’s resident fraud expert, Matt Hammond with no less than 25 mentions, coming in second is Daniel Toresen with 10, followed by the wild card in the story Mark Bewley of BDO also on 10 and poor old Jenny Read, the only one with any real credibility, on 2.

The article is basically about Ernst and Young, it is in fact unadulterated shameless promotion, posing as news and editorial.

The hypocrisy is astounding not just because of this piece but the history of this behaviour by the New Zealand Herald and its publisher. In an even stranger irony another Herald toady, Bryce Edward, the bloke who is also masquerading as a lecturer at Otago University wrote a peice that appeared online today. “Bryce Edwards: The state of the media” is an opinion piece that purports to tell it as it is, Edwards as usual pontificates using generalisations most of which on this occasion have been gleaned from the recently released JMAD media ownership report.

A couple of these “observations” which Bryce in usual style simply glosses over are particularly relevant;

“In a section entitled “Political machinations and the blogosphere”, the JMAD report finds “increasing evidence of unethical alliances among bloggers, politicians, PR companies and legacy media”. And it’s not only Cameron Slater’s blogging that is highlighted, but others from the left.”

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11369562

Of course Edwards focus is on the political angle but of equal importance in establishing the level of trust that should be accorded to what Edwards likes to call the “legacy media” one should cast a wider net. One needs to look closely at the alliances that exist between the so-call legacy media and their paying advertisers. This article by Twose is just one such case were the New Zealand Herald needs to be called-out for being complete and utter fraudsters.

Whatever the story is about it is certainly not news, nor is it genuine editorial.

The content is largely given over to promoting Ernst and Young and Daniel Toresen, their so-called expertise in fraud investigations; as were the tweets the pair fired off the minute the story was published. Although for a number of good reasons, which will become more than obvious, we suspect that Toresen was simply riding on the coat-tails of a story pieced together for Ernst & Young.

The more than enthusiastic Toresen in fact manages to clobber the New Zealand police’s Auckland fraud squad in the process, painting them as inept, or worse, underfunded clowns that are years behind the eight ball with their investigations, the not at all subtle message being that only Toresen and his co-racketeer; Matthew Hammond are capable of fulfilling the needs of New Zealand’s defrauded masses;

“Toresen has had cases where there has been an investigation, an admission of guilt, the money has been recovered and three years later a call has come from police with the file.

“That is absolutely ridiculous and it’s a matter of staffing and priorities”………

“There is just literally no staff available to fully investigate quickly any of these cases……..

“There are massive delays at Auckland Fraud Squad and files just aren’t being worked on.”

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11369006

Toresen is of course right, but the cases that police are not working on are more often than not because they are complex, in fact well beyond the ability of the under qualified and underpaid police staff who are employed for the task. The second cause for the polices failure to investigate frauds is far more sinister, it actually has more to do with the old six degrees of separation hypothesis, the cops corruptly shelving complaints because someone knows or is in someway connected to the accused.

There are in fact genuine complaints, among them fraud and perjury, laid with police that have stalled, complaints that have been passed on to Lauda Finem by victims requesting assistance. Many of those cases have strangely stalled, once hitting the desk of one particular police officer within Auckland’s ciminal investigation branch (CIB).

The officer in question is known to the New Zealand Public, although certainly not for his investigation of dishonesty offense’s, rather the public notoriety was for dishonesty, his own, over the 2007 Urewera Police raids involving the indigenous New Zealand Ngāi Tūhoe tribe.

The officer concerned is one detective sergeant Aaron Pascoe, who at the time of the Tuhoe raids in 2007 was a so-called police computer expert, having personally supervised at least one of the raids and who later gave evidence which was discredited in court.

Pascoe’s involvement in the 2007 so-called police terrorism raids came into question when it was discovered by counsel for the defense, Hugh Rennie QC, that police had acted recklessly and unlawfully, Pascoe having manufactured false affidavits in support of the search warrants police had obtained.

Pascoe was also caught up in another related fiasco when it was disovered that he had been behind hundreds of www.trademe.co.nz customers personal details being handed to prisoners. At the time TradeMe customers who had been caught up in the scandal were astonished that their details had even been released by the online auction house.

Police subsequently made all sorts of excuses and Pascoe remained defiant but at the end of the day LF investigations have established that TradeMe had employed corrupt excop Dean Winter as their head of security and that Winter and Pascoe had worked together on the release of the confidential material;

Police deliver TradeMe names to prisoners

August 3rd, 2008

Trade Me security manager Dean Winter said the company had no choice in what information it gave to police. The popular Kiwi auction site was merely a witness in the investigation and had no control over the information once it had been passed on, Winter said.

“We were served with a search warrant, and we complied with the search warrant. We didn’t have a choice whether we thought the information was relevant or not.”

Winter said it was disappointing the information had been passed on by police to the accused.

“I think lawyers should take more responsibility for the information they receive under disclosure in some circumstances,” the former detective said. They need to take responsibility for its security. Handing it on to the accused is a bit silly in some cases.”

Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe, of the police Special Investigation Group, refused to comment on what information had been requested from Trade Me and why.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10524998

LF archive reference source: http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/police-deliver-trademe-names-to-prisoners-national-nz-herald-news-2014-12-06-09-59-57.png

Following the media expose’s in August 2008, and LF believes as a result of a corrupt collusion between Winter and Pascoe, Dean Winter mysteriously departed the Fairfax owned TradeMe, only to immediately turn up in a job that had been organised for him behind the scenes as a civil servant within a New Zealand government department, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries;

The only reason we are in fact citing the above case is because it has a strong  bearing on one of the many complaints sitting on Sergeant Aaron Pascoes desk, Pascoe being determined, as he was with the Urewera raids, to bury any evidence of wrong doing by sworn police or his ex-cop colleagues (LF will be publishing a detailed report on this case and various other cases involving Pascoe and Winter at some point next year).

LF has evidence of both Dean Winter and Aaron Pascoe again being involved in corrupt collusion and the abuse of police resources. The pair attempting to prevent a police fraud investigation proceeding, an investigation that would establish not only that the fraud itself had occurred but would also likely result in Dean Winters being charged with corruption and the perversion of justice for his part in a 2011 – 2012 Real Estate Agents Authority investigation that concealed the very same serious criminal offending. This particular case resulted in Winter again being secretly moved behind the scenes, this time promoted to a role within the Department of Justice, where he is now responsible for “formally” liaising with Police and Crown prosecutors.

As for the specific scenario cited by Toresen, well knowing Toresen it’s more than likely a complete fiction. Toresen is particularly good at inventing material, especially evidence; if it assists with getting his invoices paid before the rents due. The fact is that Toresen has almost no real experience investigating fraud. Most of Toresen and Thompsons bread and butter business is derived from the more than a little seedy business of process serving, engaging accident victims and insurance claimants utalizing various online forums (www.accforum.org) attempting to locate individuals engaging in disability insurance fraud (without success) and repossession’s, with marital infidelity being another slow and unreliable income stream.

In fact any one who even considers engaging Toresen to investigate a fraud would have to be a complete fool, someone who was willing to throw good money after bad.

In some of the cases that LF have seen were Toresen has himself been involved the fraudsters have actually been those who themselves engaged Toresen’s services to assist in commiting the fraud.

Toresen’s partner in the business is actually his father, an old school ex-cop who was himself drummed out of the New Zealand Police force in the early 1980’s partnering up with other bent cops the likes of the now infamous Lewis Noel Proctor. Thompson senior only recently having been convicted of assaulting an elderly McKenzie friend at Auckland’s District Court.

 

Toresen’s claim that he has spent “25 years” in the “Family Business” is also a complete and utter lie. Both he and his father have worked for various businesses over the years, having had various partnerships with both the aforementioned Lewis Noel Proctor and Private investigator Ron McQuilter, those business relationships faltering for a miriad of reasons not normally found in your garden variety small business enterprise.

“Toresen & Thompson” is in fact only a recent invention, also trading as “The Investigators” Toresen’s website, www.theinvestigators.co.nz, offers the appearance of substance, whilst the reality is something quite different. Toresen in fact works from home and a serviced office providers hot-desk facility in down-town Auckland’s viaduct basin.

This pair, father and son, however still have some pretty impressive corrupt contacts within the New Zealand Police force which they use regularly to unlawfully obtain otherwise confidential police information – which is why Toresen’s paragraph dissing the New Zealand police fraud squad came as quiet a surprise.

In fact when it comes to the police in New Zealand it’s a very small world. Included among Toresen’s loose lipped police “friends” is Senior Sergeant Grant Harris, formally of the Onehunga police district, the very same police officer responsible for receiving the aforementioned fraud complaint that Pascoe is now attempting to hide and bury on behalf of the ex-cop Dean Winter……a very small world indeed

Before we take a closer look at McManus and her very dodgy relationships with known felons such as Daniel Toresen’s partner in crime and father, Danny Thompson Snr, lets take a closer look at Ms Twose.

The New Zealand Herald claims her as their own, however that claim, like everything else the Herald prints, is ever so slightly dodgy. Twose is actually self-employed, she’s a freelance writer who for the most part works from her home in the Auckland suburb of Sandringham. The corporate entity she uses for tax purposes is Write Up Limited, having it’s registered office c/o  Skipper Lay & Associates, Papakura, Auckland.

According to Linkin Twose obtained he Batchelor of Art at the University of Waikto and a post grad Diploma in journalism from the Auckland University of Technology. She worked for the New Zealand Herald as a “Business” reporter for 6 years between 2006 and 2012, where she came to know Jenni McManus, who was in the same field, before striking out on her own. In fact from what we can see her bread and butter income is now derived from a quite different form of writing, a million miles from what could even be considered good journalism.

So how was it that Twose was able to obtain access to all of these self-proclaimed experts, and of course the SFO’s Julie Read? Well there is a clue to be had in a couple of articles LF has posted over the years relating to Jenni McManus, the first back in 2011;

Off to the dark side – Jenni McManus joins Ernst &Young

October 26th 2011

“McManus was from the outset corruption personified, beginning in early days as a rookie at colemans The National Business Review, under the tutelage of the inebriate and gun running bullshit artist Warren Berryman McManus undoubtedly found it impossible to lay straight in bed. Not that Berryman would’ve been bothered, he was doubtless to pissed to remember if she slept standing on her head.

Berryman, however, was not the only fraudster McManus had climbed into bed with. Both he and McManus often enjoyed a very cosy, somewhat unique, domestic arrangement with the New Zealand Police force, especially during the rape and torture of commissioner John Jamieson’s police dynasty – as an aside, John Jamieson an accomplished expert in police cover-ups is now investigating claims of abuse for the Catholic Church.”
Source: http://laudafinem.com/2011/10/26/off-to-the-dark-side-jenni-mcmanus-joins-ernst-young/ 

The second was published a little more than three months ago, both pieces well worth a read for anyone interested in the truth or just how things work in little old corruption free New Zealand:

The Blomfield Files – Toresen & Thompson Private Dicks, Who Is Daniel Toresen?

July 28th 2014

“Compared to his very dull partners McQuilter had always been more of a show-pony entrepenureal type than he was a good grass roots investigator. In fact the narcissistic tendancy thats often now demonstrated by Daniel James Thompson-Toresen aka Thompson Jr, the propensity for exaggeration and the need to lie about his capabilities and company’s standing can be traced back to his association with Ron McQuilter and his savy usery of the local press.

McQuilter the minute he set foot in New Zealand started courting the media so as to promote himself. First befriending the now deceased Warren Berryman of National Business Review (NBR) fame and seriously corrupt journo, later Berryman’s wife, Jenni McManus.”

Source: http://laudafinem.com/2014/07/28/the-blomfield-files-toresen-thompson-private-dicks-who-is-daniel-toresen/

The truth of the matter is that it was Jenni McManus in her role as Ernst and Young’s spin doctor that likely first came up with the idea. McManus knows that her old buddy Toresen is up to his neck in trouble, both financially and legally. So what better way to raise his profile and the public perception of “Integrity”.

McManus has in fact cynically linked Toresen to Ernst and Young so as to run Toresen and his shattered reputation through the laundry so to speak, to expunge the current batch of horror stories, created by Toresen himself, that currently pop up in any google search of his name or company.

The side effects will of course be huge in time. That in doing so, in attempting to link Toresen with the inherent credibility of international accountancy franchise Ernst and Young and their Auckland based employee Matthew Hammond, McManus has done immeasurable damage to the franchise’s brand.

The New Zealand Herald too have played a part in this abject failure, as has freelance spin doctor Helen Twose. So at the end of the day who was it that was twixing Twose twot, whilst hiding behind the drapes?

Jenni McManus of course, wherever journalistic skullduggery is to be found in New Zealand the grand old hag of Kiwi media, Jenni McManus, will have had a hand in it (and the odd finger or two), maybe not directly, but with a career spanning more than three decades the bitch has had a hand in “educating” (dirty tricks and all) almost every Kiwi journalist with a recognisable name and whats left of a reputation.

Interestingly, the stats, or “Fraud facts” that Helen thought to include at the very end of her wholly fabricated crap have been lifted straight out of a survey of alleged frauds committed against not for profit organisations, a report that was wholly based on self-reported events, relying heavily on trust and having nothing whatsoever to do with the problem of fraud as it exists in the commercial business environment.

Whats even worse is that Twose, obviously a complete charlatan, neglected to cite the BDO Not-for-profit Survey, leading the reader to believe that the research was in fact her own work and even relevant, at best some might call it plagiarism. Others however might be less kind and call it for what it is, a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and consumers – in fact it might be worth someone filing a formal complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority, and the New Zealand Press Council.

Fraud facts
• 83% of respondents believe their organisation has a low risk of fraud.
• 54% of the largest frauds reported in 2014 were attributed to payroll fraud.
• 54% of fraud victims did not report the fraud to police.
• 63% of respondents terminated the perpetrator’s employment.
• 53% of organisations that suffered fraud did not recover any funds from the perpetrator.
•Financial pressure and maintaining a lifestyle were the most common motivators for the largest frauds identified; gambling was the motive for 54% of the total value of frauds and had the highest average fraud.
•Tip-offs (35%) and internal controls (30%) were the most effective ways of discovering fraud.
•Only 18% of respondents have implemented a whistle-blower policy, despite tip-offs being identified as one of the most effective ways to discover fraud.

Source: http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/employee-fraud-and-the-price-of-trust-business-nz-herald-news-2014-12-06-10-09-58.png