Scam was to fuel friend's addiction

Retired Chinese couple Ena and Hok Lai Dung were trying to help a younger friend fuel her drug addiction when they agreed to take part in an elaborate scam to get supplies of the painkiller pethidine.

The Whakatane couple, aged 69 and 74, pretended to be tourists unable to speak English, while unemployed Taupo man Gordon Joe, 64, posed as a tour bus driver, acting out different scenarios between July 14 and August 21 to obtain the class B prescription drug.

The trio admitted their part in the drug scam in Masterton District Court yesterday.

They now face sentencing on six joint charges of obtaining by deception and theft of drugs.

Yesterday the court was told that the three were at a motel in Eltham, Taranaki, when they called an ambulance to help a woman they were travelling with.

The woman was taken to Taranaki Base Hospital, while the Dungs and Joe followed behind in a car, telling staff that they were friends of hers on a bus tour of New Zealand.

At the hospital the woman gave a false name and said she had a history of kidney problems and had been treated before in Canada.

She was admitted, and over two days given pethidine from a drip - till hospital staff contacted the Canadian hospital, which had no knowledge of the woman. The drip was stopped and the woman discharged herself.

On August 16, the group arrived in Masterton, where they stayed for five days before police cottoned on to the scam and raided their motel unit.

This time, it was Ena Lai Dung who was rushed into medical centres in a wheelchair, faking a serious back injury from a fall.

The woman who had been receiving drug treatment in Taranaki said she was an orthopaedic nurse on holiday from Canada, and Joe was the group's tour bus driver.

The woman even had a "care diary", fabricating the care and medicine she had given to Dung.

The diary was completed till August 23, two days after they were arrested.

Twice the group managed to obtain prescriptions for pethidine tablets.

When caught by police, the Dungs and Joe said that their trip had been fully funded by the other woman they were travelling with and that the drugs were all for her use.

They were remanded on bail for reports to be prepared before sentencing in Masterton on October 18.

The woman who police claim was the mastermind of the operation was prohibited in 2001, under the Misuse of Drugs Act, from obtaining or attempting to obtain prescription drugs.

She is denying the charges, and is to appear for a status hearing on October 17.

- © Fairfax NZ News