The Crown says murder-accused Julia DeLuney used money from her mother to pay off credit card debt and invest further in cryptocurrency.
DeLuney is on trial for the murder of her 79-year-old mother, Helen Gregory, who died at her home in the Wellington suburb of Khandallah in January last year, a crime which she denies.
Two days before her mother’s death, DeLuney sent her an email saying a sum of money she had invested six months ago on her mother’s behalf had made a large profit – more than $268,000 – and she recommended they cash out.
She said in order to do that, she needed $30,000 for withdrawal fees and tax liability, and asked her mother to cover half.
The court heard on Monday from a cryptocurrency expert that those fees were “totally false,” and a common scam.
The court also heard DeLuney used a screenshot of someone else’s crypto account to show her mother a graph of her profits.
But her mother set about finding $15,000. She had $6000 in cash, which the Crown heard from a bank teller she deposited into her daughter’s account on January 23.
Then, the court was played a phone call between Gregory and her bank in which she withdrew more from her Kiwisaver, sending a further $9000 to DeLuney’s bank account.
Those payments appear on DeLuney’s statement with the reference: JULIAFROMMUM.
Then, her bank statements show she used that money to pay off credit card debt, buy a Lotto ticket, make payments to Sky TV, Afterpay and Mitre 10, and invested about $2000 in cryptocurrency.
Financial analyst Eric Huang told the court his analysis of DeLuney’s financial records, excluding cash deposits, showed she had spent more than she earned in the year before her mother’s death, the High Court heard on Tuesday.
Huang told the court records showed that between January 1, 2023 and January 25, 2024 – the day after her mother’s death – she spent more than $155,000 on cryptocurrency investments. That totalled 47% of her income.
Huang said in that same period, she received more than $92,000 from friends and family, primarily her mother and father.
Her earnings from cryptocurrency, at least the ones which passed through her bank accounts, were outweighed by her investments; by January 2024, she was $68,000 in the red.
Huang said his analysis had shown she spent a “significant amount” on Afterpay purchases, totalling $39,000, on travel and accommodation, totalling $5736, and on personal beauty services like hair and nails, totalling $4339.
She did not meet her minimum repayments on her credit card three months out of 12.
The Crown said DeLuney attacked her mother before staging it to look like she had fallen from the attic, a crime which was potentially financially motivated.
But the defence claims someone else caused those injuries in the 90 minutes in which she had gone to get help.
The trial is expected to continue into next week.
rnz.co.nz
