Blair David Beaumont (37) was jailed for nearly four years when he appeared in the Dunedin District Court in September last year on more than 30 fraud charges.
He saw the Parole Board for the first time last month at the Otago Corrections Facility where his counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner accepted he was not ready for immediate release.
She said his offending, which began in December 2018, just months after his release from prison for similar swindling, was driven by alcohol and a gambling addiction.
But that did not wash with the panel convener, Neville Trendle, who noted he had 75 dishonesty convictions stretching back 19 years.
"The board had difficulty with his explanation for an entrenched pattern of not paying for his accommodation," he said.
"Having regard to his lengthy and diverse offending history it seems to us that there is something much deeper behind his dishonesty than spur-of-the-moment deception as a consequence of gambling and substance abuse."
Beaumont’s deception continued until May last year as he left victims out of pocket in Central and North Otago, South Canterbury, Canterbury and Wellington.
His fraudulent activity, racking up debts totalling $65,000, took many forms, from the online sales of non-existent items to the theft of a commercial floor scrubber.
He posed as a handyman and failed to complete work for which he was paid, and he would also charge accommodation and meals to his business, bills which were similarly ignored.
Mr Trendle said Beaumont’s criminal record began in 2003 with convictions for theft as a servant and his chicanery had continued "virtually unabated since then".
The board heard he had completed a drug treatment programme while behind bars and was living in the self-care units, with a "trusted position" working outside the wire.
Ms Saunderson-Warner said Beaumont had been accepted on to a residential drug and alcohol programme for January next year but Mr Trendle was not satisfied the proposal met the risk the man posed. He recommended the prisoner undertake the medium intensity rehabilitation programme in jail.
Beaumont will appear before the board again in June next year.
