By Felicity Dear of 
Julie Morton Photo: ODT / Felicity Dear
A six-year fight for justice had its final chapter in the Dunedin District Court last week. Otago Daily Times PIJF court reporter Felicity Dear reports on a Dunedin woman's million-dollar swindle and a family ripped apart by her persistent dishonesty.
When Julie Morton was a teenager she would nick coins from her father's collection.
It was only a few dollars, but they were important to her father, an avid collector who kept them pristine in plastic pouches.
He was hurt when he discovered his daughter had cut the coins out of the pouches and spent them on herself.
So it was a shock to Julie's brother John Morton when the longtime thief was given enduring power of attorney (EPOA) by their parents in 2015 after their father died and their mother lost capacity to manage her finances.
"She has no empathy, no conscience; she enjoys deceit," John said.
The decision ultimately forced John into a lengthy battle for justice after his sister abused her power to steal $1 million from their ailing mother, Rona Morton.
He first discovered the crime in 2022, but did not report it to police until a related civil legal battle was wrapped up.
So in March last year, John embarked on a solo mission and spent hours collecting evidence so he could present a compelling case to police.
But email correspondence viewed by the Otago Daily Times shows Criminal Investigation Branch Detective Sergeant Neil Lowden shut John down and refused to file charges, insisting it was a civil matter.
"As this matter stands and with the information at hand I believe that this is a civil matter where the appropriate resolution lies with the executor and lawyers," Lowden said.
John was determined the matter was criminal and referred police to similar cases where people had been prosecuted.
"I am at a loss as to what you need to progress this case other than what you already have," he pleaded with them.
John Morton was a victim of his sister Julie's million dollar theft from their mother. Photo: Supplied / Otago Daily Times
John also approached the Serious Fraud Office which told him "the information provided does not support an allegation of serious or complex fraud offending" so they could not deal with it.
After police decided they would not investigate the allegations further, John's desperation grew.
He contacted Age Concern which liaised with police before telling John the case was "far too complex and complicated" for the organisation to deal with.
Police advised Age Concern "there is obviously no 'crime' having been committed as she had 'lawful' access to the funding by right of her EPOA".
No one would help.
"Even though I had all the evidence there in front of me and [gave] it to them, it wouldn't work," John said.
After exhausting every avenue and being stone-walled each time, John instructed lawyers to collate the evidence and present it to police.
"I said, 'I'll pay you to go to their offices, sit in the offices of the police and convince them this is a crime'," John said.
"Eventually, [police] agreed to investigate after that."
John said Detective Brianna O'Connell took him seriously and progressed the investigation into Julie.
It still took about a year before police laid six charges of theft in a special relationship which represented hundreds of fraudulent transactions between July 2015 and March 2018.
She was brought before the Dunedin District Court in May and admitted the crimes a few weeks later.
Last Friday at the Dunedin District Court, Julie was sentenced to imprisonment for three years and two months.
She took $965,310 of her mother's money in total and spent it on clothing, jewellery and landscaping.
As a result of the money being stolen, John missed out on his full inheritance.
He estimated he would have inherited $1.6 million, had Julie's theft not occurred, and said he spent $100,000 on legal fees.
"Emotionally, the impact has been devastating," John said in a statement to the court.
"I and my children have lost trust in people, and importantly in the institutions that should have protected my mother and me."
The court heard Julie's children had picked up the bill, contributing cash and some of their inheritance to make up for the money their mother swindled from the estate.
And while Julie and John got along as children, she still had not apologised to her brother.
"I'm very glad that my mother is not alive to see this. She would be so devastated by this," John said.
But this was not the first time Julie found herself in trouble over her deceitful tendencies.
"None of us were particularly surprised, I suppose, that it happened again," John said.
In 1997, Julie (then Julie De Bono) was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment for pilfering more than $200,000 from a real estate company while she was employed as the firm's Dunedin rental office manager.
That theft also spanned nearly three years and she justified it by saying "it was an organisation making plenty of money for doing little work".
The crime shocked and devastated the family, especially Julie's mother Rona.
"We have not aged two years in the last two years but 22 years," she said in a statement to the court.
"Our health is ruined and we no longer have the energy to face each day."
Julie Morton, pictured in 2017, was an organiser at the Public Service Association. Photo: Supplied / Otago Daily Times / Peter McIntosh
Julie's father George paid for her lawyer in that case and repaid the stolen cash - which Julie still owed him when he died in 2014.
He was a well-known accountant in Dunedin and was ashamed of his daughter's actions.
He said she had always been "a little bit of a black sheep".
"She's a sort of person that likes to manipulate other people, and my view is this is what she enjoys about this sort of stuff, and she actually likes the deceit more than the money."
After Julie was released from jail the first time, she got a degree, raised her children and repaired her relationship with her family.
"I think she was probably showing my parents that she was behaving properly," John said.
They never talked about the crimes and after about five years the family moved on and forgave her - she was family, it was what families do.
And Julie went on to hold some important roles in the Dunedin community.
She was the Public Service Association organiser, a job that in 2017 she told the Otago Daily Times she chose because she "discovered the power imbalance between employers and employees needs constant and active advocacy to help improve people's working lives".
"Not much emphasis is put into the rights and interests of workers; it all seems to be about how to increase profit," Julie said.
She also worked in academia in the management department at the University of Otago while continuing with postgraduate study and as an employment relations manager for Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora.
Her crime-free life lasted about 20 years, until it was derailed by her greed again.
Julie was given enduring power of attorney in 2015. Her ailing mother was in care and her father had recently died.
One of Julie's children, who the Otago Daily Times agreed not to name, said he was not aware of their mother's deceit.
"We assumed any disposable income came from her full time employment, the fact that she lived alone and at the time we all believed her to be mortgage free," he said.
He said all of the children chipped in to pay back the stolen money in hopes it would "help bring an end to the anguish so we could all move on with our lives and attempt to pick up the pieces".
"As the child of a parent who commits crime, you feel a sense of shame and irrational guilt that is difficult to put into words," he said.
They felt embarrassed by Julie's actions and sympathised with John, although they had not spoken to one another for years.
"We hope to reconnect with him someday over a beer so he can gain some insight into the challenges of being a child of a narcissistic parent and what we have all been going through on this side of the Ditch," he said.
At sentencing last week, the court heard Julie was selling her house and putting the money into a trust which would benefit her children, not John.
John said it was a "slap in the face" that Julie was not personally ordered to fork out for her crimes.
"The bit that really gets me - even if I've got nothing, it doesn't really worry me - is the fact that she got away with not [paying any restitution]," John said.
"That seems to be extraordinary."
Two of Julie's children were executors of John's mother's estate, which was professionally overseen by a lawyer.
Once he saw his mother's bank statements, Julie's frivolous use of the money became abundantly clear.
A regular payment to a house-cleaning service was what first caught his eye, before he noticed the lawn-mowing bill and a weekly allowance of $850 to one of Julie's daughters.
"My mother was in care for three years prior to this. She wasn't getting the house cleaned and all this other stuff."
He requested more bank statements and that was when the extent of the fraud was revealed.
"Every few days, there [were] thousands of dollars going to Julie's credit card, there was money going out left, right and centre. It was just so obvious," John said.
"But they had these things on record for the whole five years prior to that."
University of Otago law professor Nicola Peart said it was an executor's job to determine what assets belong to the estate.
They do not have a duty to look into the dead person's spending while they were alive, but they will if there is a reason to.
"They're not necessarily responsible for anything that the deceased did before they died," Prof Peart said.
If a beneficiary notices missing money, the executors will be expected to find out what happened to it.
John complained to the New Zealand Law Society about three lawyers involved with overseeing his mother's estate.
"It was just so obvious when you looked at these bank accounts, and yet these lawyers ... especially a top lawyer. He couldn't see it. That's outrageous."
The law firm did not wish to comment on the complaints against its staff.
For John, Julie's prison sentence gave him some closure.
"I'm still dealing with the lawyers. But yes, I feel like one part of this is now closed and finished and we're moving on," he said.
But he could never forgive his sister for her deceit.
"I can't understand why she committed this crime - she knew the consequences from her previous crime and did not need the money," he said.
"The theft committed by Julie has impacted not only my finances but has shattered the trust and bonds that held my New Zealand family together."
He was not convinced his sister would change her ways.
"If the opportunity arises, I believe that she will do this again," he said.
This story was first published in Otago Daily Times.
