Prolific dishonesty offender Karina Knedler pleads guilty to further offending

Bonner said it was only as some of the agreed payments failed to eventuate and the excuses started to come that she realised something was amiss.

Hollows, whose birth name is “Karina Knedler”, uses a number of aliases including “Karina Longville” and “Karina Moore”, and has an extensive history of dishonesty offending.

It turned out she had fraudulently established a limited liability company to purchase the cafe.

In 2020, she had been banned from being the director or manager of a company, owing to dishonesty offending.

When Bonner and her husband realised “who she was”, they thought, “Oh my God”.

Until then, Knedler had been well-presented and convincing, driving a nice car and wearing fashionable clothing.

“... if she could just apply that brilliant mind of hers to a legitimate job, she’d be a millionaire,” Bonner said.

Bonner said the whole experience had been incredibly stressful, had made her very cynical, and she still “can’t believe someone could do that”.

Added to the stress was the fact that Bonner’s personal circumstances, which she claimed Knedler used to her advantage.

“She made out that she had a child who was really sick in Starship, which she did, but it was like years ago,” Bonner said.

“You know, and I’ve got a sick child. And so you’re like, oh, don’t worry about it. You know, ‘just get the money to us when you can’. And you just think, ‘my God, how stupid can I be?’”

About three months after Knedler “purchased” the cafe, through the limited liability company she’d fraudulently set up, it went into receivership.

Only at that point did Bonner feel some of the stress begin to ease.

They were able to get some money back through the receivership process, though she says not all.

“We were lucky because we’re not young and we’ve not done too bad through our lives, but another person, it would have broken them,” she said.

The cafe is now under new management.

The latest offending in relation to the Strand Cafe relates to breaches of the Companies Act.

Knedler pleaded guilty to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment charges, with others laid by police, last month.

Court documents released to NZME state the MBIE offending relates not to the specific sale and purchase agreement, or allegations about what she failed to pay, but rather her breaches of the Companies Act.

The MBIE summary of facts details the complex use of aliases, changes of director details on company records, and false statements.

Underpinning the offending was the fact that since 2020, she has been subject to a statutory ban on acting as a director of, or being involved in the management of, any company.

This was because of convictions she received in March 2020, for filing 13 false statements on the Companies Register.

Her statutory ban was until March 2025 and knowing this, she took “deliberate steps” to “incorporate and manage a company” associated with the purchase of the cafe – including creating a RealMe account under an alias.

Then she attempted to “distance herself from the company” by altering director records.

Knedler was sentenced on IRD offending related to The Strand Cafe, earlier this year.

The summary of facts detailed how she registered the business for GST and, a couple of weeks later, registered it as an employer. The bank account provided was her personal account.

Her house was searched in August 2024 and three bundles of sales records for the cafe were found.

They showed about $20,000 worth of cash sales that were not declared for tax. She also did not declare or pay tax deductions made from employees’ pay.

In late 2024 and early 2025, Knedler asked two victims, both of whom at the time considered her a friend, to be supervisors for her court-ordered child visitation sessions.

In both instances, she told them she’d need copies of their identification – driver’s licence or passport – for “verification puposes”.

Both complied, believing the request to be legitimate and related to the legal proceedings.

However, Knedler used the details to apply for finance through MTF Finance.

She also forged her own bank statements, altering transactions and editing the victims’ details on to the statements.

She also forged a certificate of currency and placed the victim’s real personal vehicle up as collateral for the loan.

As a result, $18,000 in personal loans was pre-approved and paid into Knedler’s account.

Attempts to get further loans through the same victim’s details, through another finance company, were unsuccessful because of failed biometric checks.

The second victim had her details used for a Mercury Energy account, with broadband, power and mobile accounts.

Knedler also used the victim’s details to open an Afterpay account, and then linked her own debit card to the account.

She made six orders through the Afterpay account, including with Kmart, The Warehouse, Caltex and Professionail.

The victim wasn’t aware of the fraudulent activity under her name until police looked at Knedler’s phone during the investigation.

As well as the MBIE offending, Knedler pleaded guilty to charges laid by police for further dishonesty offending.

They involved her using other people’s details to apply for loans in their names, without their knowledge.

Her victims included a former flatmate, whose details she used to apply for finance to purchase a Ford Mustang, and a Mercedes Benz, in July 2024.

She tricked a biometric verification through a video recording of her flatmate, having told him she needed it as part of a “tenancy check”.

He thought this was part of the process and a “full video was taken of his face”.

One application required copies of recent payslips, belonging to the victim, which Knedler created.

She used her own IRD number, but the rest of the information was false, and the loan was approved.

The total amount financed unlawfully for the first loan was $20,485; the second was $38,990.

Both vehicles were repossessed.

Around the same time as the loans for the Ford Mustang and Mercedes-Benz were taken out, Knedler was contacted about “issues with her repayments” for a hire purchase agreement for another vehicle, a Nissan X-Trail.

She changed the ownership details to the name of a co-defendant, and it was listed for sale.

A vehicle trader saw the listing, and got in touch with the co-defendant, offering $14,000.

But when the trader did some checks, he found the ownership had been changed back to Knedler, and had finance owing.

However, Knedler and her co-defendant provided a fake email saying the repayments owed were a “miscalculation”.

On July 5, 2024, the trader paid the $14,000 into Hollows/Knedler’s account, and collected the vehicle from a car yard in Manukau.

Knedler then reported it stolen, and when the trader called MTF Finance to speed up the release of security, as he intended to sell it, he found there was still money owed on it.

Realising something was wrong, he found it was listed as stolen, surrendered the car, and was left out of pocket.

Knedler pleaded guilty last month to a range of charges that cover the offending, including obtains by deception, forges (not cheque) to obtain over $500, accesses a computer system for dishonesty purposes, and the breaches of the Companies Act.

She is already serving a term of imprisonment of nearly three and a half years on the earlier charges, and is expected to be sentenced on the latest charges in the coming months.

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.

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