Neha Sharma appeared to be an honest, hard-working property manager at Oranga Tamariki. Her husband ran a construction company. No-one knew about their marriage until after they'd conned the Government agency out of more than $2 million.
Roughly eight months after Christchurch-based construction company Divine Connection was added to Oranga Tamariki's list of contractors questions began to emerge about the quality of its paperwork.
The issue was flagged with Neha Sharma, the property and facilities manager at Oranga Tamariki.
Unbeknown to her colleagues, Sharma had been living a double life. To colleagues, she was a trusted government employee. She was also the wife of Divine Connection's director - a serious conflict of interest that she'd kept concealed as she approved the company's invoices, got him jobs that could have been carried out by other companies, and even carried out work for the company during office hours.
In late March 2023, the Serious Fraud Office raided the couple's property, putting an end to their hopes of an early retirement. An investigation revealed the couple had obtained more than $2 million from Oranga Tamariki.
Earlier this month, Neha Sharma was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to a series of charges including obtaining by deception, money laundering and using a forged document.
However, media were unable to report on her pleas until Friday when her husband, Amandeep Sharma, pleaded guilty to obtaining by deception and money laundering.
As part of her job application, she provided two referees who worked at the Ministry of Education. Written references were provided from what appeared to be their personal email addresses.
The references were actually forged by Neha Sharma, and the email accounts were not theirs.
In her role it was possible for Neha Sharma to contact the National Accounting Centre and get them to add a new contractor to the system.
Nema Sharma was the budget manager for the properties that Divine Connection worked for and was therefore able to authorise all the invoices.
One of the invoices included a new television that had been purchased for her own home, rather than an OT home.
Other invoices were approved and paid to Divine Connection by Sharma despite her knowing there had been a markup of more than 150 percent.
November 2, 2022 was fairly eventful.
At 8.40am, Sharma received a notification she had a meeting on Teams for the following day. The meeting would relate to concerns she had issued jobs and approved works and invoices associated with Divine Connection. There was more - they had worked out the company appeared to be registered to her home address.
An hour later Sharma sent her resignation to her manager and two others.
After leaving OT, Neha Sharma got a job as regional delivery advisor at the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) Waka Kotahi, starting on 12 December, 2022.
She again used the name of a former colleague at the Ministry of Education as a referee.
However, when she tried logging into the email address, she had used to send the reference for her job at OT she could not sign in.
She then created another email address using the man's name again. The phone number she gave for the referee was actually her husband's.
She then submitted an online reference through NZTA's system.
On 25 November, Neha Sharma received a call from NZTA. Two minutes after the call she texted her husband to say he was about to get a call, but not to answer.
On 30 March, the Serious Fraud Office came knocking on the couple's door.
At the time of the raids the couple owned three properties and three cars. They also had about $800,000 in cash in their joint bank accounts.