A man in Auckland has been convicted for issuing over 900 dodgy Warrant of Fitnesses (WoFs) in what is the first prosecution of its kind.
The culprit, Brett Wayne Robinson, was sentenced to eight months of home detention and ordered to pay “various costs” after inspecting vehicles unlawfully.
Waka Kotahi’s Senior Manager for Safer Vehicles, Nicole Botherway, says Robinson was never qualified to carry out vehicle safety inspections and issued warrants by using the details of an inspector who no longer worked for the transport agency.
When the initial investigation began, Waka Kotahi revoked all WoFs issued by the impersonator, requiring vehicle owners to have their vehicles inspected elsewhere.
“We have appointed over 8000 vehicle inspectors at more than 3500 inspecting organisations and the vast majority of them carry out vehicle inspections correctly,” says Botherway.
“For their sake, and for the public of New Zealand, it’s important we protect the integrity of the system and act when we do find fraudulent behaviour.”
Botherway says the role of the Waka Kotahi Safer Vehicles team is to review inspection organisations and vehicle inspectors to check their compliance so that situations like this don’t occur again.
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