NZ - Postie to pay cost of digging up letters

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An Auckland postie who buried 28,000 pieces of mail in her garden has been ordered to pay NZ Post $4000 for the cost of digging it up.

The woman, now 38, buried the mail over a three-year period leading up to 2005.

She admitted and was convicted of a representative charge of theft by a person in a special relationship when she appeared in Waitakere District Court this week. She has been granted permanent name suppression.

The charge carries a maximum jail term of seven years, but the woman avoided a prison sentence.

At a court appearance in September it was revealed the theft was discovered in 2005 when the woman tried to use a Warehouse voucher that had been cancelled.

The Herald on Sunday reported her lawyer Owen Harold saying a conviction could see her lose her new job and she would be unable to support the child in her care.

She did not bury the letters for personal gain and he offered to provide the court with medical evidence of the woman's mental health issues.

NZ Post had sought the $4000 for recovering the mail, which had been buried over a three-year period. Some of the mail had been in an extremely poor state when dug up.

NZ Post spokeswoman Jaimee Burke said the woman was no longer employed by the company after she redeemed the Warehouse voucher in 2005.

"We feel extremely let down by this blatant breach of our standards," she said in a statement.
"This is an isolated incident concerning a former postie which occurred seven years ago. We have more than 2000 posties who are doing a great job and take great pride in their work."


The conviction comes as former Queenstown postie Phillipa Lindsay, 32, also faces the same theft charge over allegations she stole about 17,000 mail items that she should have delivered.