Papa Mike

which sounds like a lot, right?

But in their defense, and it was their defense in court, they said, well, it's actually legal to export five kilos per person of paname, which shocked me.

I couldn't believe you could do that.

Yeah.

Um, and they had something for the, for the mother, something for the son, something for a friend.

They were pretty close to, to the, you know, sort of 15 allowed kilos.

Um, but the, the prosecution said, no, that wasn't the case.

They, they knew exactly what they were doing.

And, um, and this was the tip of the iceberg and it was a really important case, a landmark case because it was the first one taken by, by customs.

And so they were found that the trial went over the end of March and, um,

They were found guilty by the judge on early April.

The sentencing was last Friday, so went back to the Manukau District Court.

And they were hoping, the defence or the mother and daughter were hoping that they'd have their conviction quashed and they'd have a penalty without conviction quashed.

Obviously, the Crown and Ngāi Tahu, who are the custodians or the kaitiaki of Pounamu in New Zealand, they were hoping that the conviction would stand.

The defence argued that if they had a conviction, then they would have difficulty getting visas around the world and that kind of thing.

Judge had none of that.

He convicted them and also fined them, I think a sum of around $5,000.

So not a heck of a lot of money.

But when I spoke to some of the kaumātua from Ngāi Tahu, they said, you know, it wasn't so much about the money.

It was getting this on the record that this is the wrong thing to do.